


That Day in May

by William_Easley



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Adventures, Birthday, F/M, Love Scenes, Party, Romance, Supernatural - Freeform, surprise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-16
Updated: 2020-10-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:33:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 42,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26494927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/William_Easley/pseuds/William_Easley
Summary: Never once has Dipper been there to help Wendy celebrate her birthday. As she approaches the big 21, he's determined to change that. However, fate and chance happen to everyone, and also it is incredibly hard to keep a secret from Wendy. Wendip and some love scenes, reasonably discreet and non-explicit!
Relationships: Mabel Pines/T.K. O'Grady (OC), Wendy Corduroy/Dipper Pines
Comments: 33
Kudos: 21





	1. The Hardest Thing

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own the show Gravity Falls or any of the characters. They are the property of the Walt Disney Company and of the show's creator, Alex Hirsch. I earn no money from writing my fanfictions; I do them out of love for the show, for practice writing, and to amuse myself and, I hope, other readers.

* * *

**That Day in May**

**By William Easley**

_(April-May 2018)_

* * *

**1-The Hardest Thing**

Some secrets are more important than others. There are state secrets, so weighty and ponderous that the release of even one might result in a vicious, destructive war. "General, this note is just between us, but the Prime Minister wants us to establish friendly relations with this small, defenseless nation in order to gain a position of trust from which we may assassinate all their leaders, seize all their natural resources, and enslave their entire population. PS-Bwah-hah-hah-hah!!!!" That secret would be a bad one if it were disclosed. The written evil laugh is a step over the line. The four exclamation points are a sure sign of insanity.

On the other hand, "Mrs. Bogliosi, I lied about the dog eating my homework" is, trust me, a trivial secret. Your teacher already knows good and well that you didn't do the homework, the same way she knows for a fact that Jimmy's grandmother has not died six times in the past four months.

Other secrets are of variable quality: "Jenny loves Georgie!" would be apt to create considerable friction when the parties involved are in second grade. If they were seniors in high school, however, it might lead to unexpected events, perhaps featuring a minister and a shotgun.

However, great or small, important or trifling, the crux and key to every secret is this: The one keeping the secret should never, ever, let the person from whom the secret is being kept know what the secret is. That is harder to do than you would think.

Edgar Allan Poe wrote of the "imp of the perverse." By that he personified the inexplicable urge we all have to do things very much against our own interest. It's the imp of the perverse that makes a person new to mountain climbing think, "I'll bet I can scale this cliff without these darn safety ropes. There, that's better— _ **YAH**_ _-HA-ha-_ hooie!"

In Poe's story, the Imp signified the inner force that would make a criminal who'd pulled off the perfect crime—a murder that could never be solved by Sherlock Holmes himself, committed by a murderer who had got away clean with the bloody deed, someone fat and happy with the spoils of his evil action—also be someone who could not refrain from yelling out on the bus, "Hey, everybody! I killed Colonel Mustard in the library with a thermonuclear device!"

That same imp, with no greater implications, too often implies that a person with a secret feels the implicit urge to impishly drop hints of the secret to the person he or she wishes to impress. So a young man who has already bought the engagement ring but hasn't told his sweetheart the news might over pizza casually say something like, "I love your delicate hands. What size ring do you take, about a seven?"

"You got me a ring!" she squeals, right in the middle of a pizzeria, leaving her boyfriend, who did not intend to ask her in such a situation, impatiently muttering imprecations.

All in all, it's difficult to keep a secret. Benjamin Franklin, under the pseudonym of Poor Richard, advised, "Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead." In the old days, the Gaels similarly had a saying, _Cha rùn agus rùn aig triùir e,_ or "It's not a secret if three people know it."

Keeping a secret is _hard._

And if the person you're keeping your secret from, should you happen to touch her skin to skin, can literally read your mind, and if the only _other_ person you've let in on the secret is your sister, Mabel Pines, even a snowball in hell wouldn't give you a nickel (plugged or unplugged, dealer's choice) for your chance of not slipping up and letting Wendy know what you were planning.

In other words, Dipper was perplexed, pothered, and prewildered. He—what? Prewildered? That's the uncomfortable sense that you are _going_ to be bewildered before you actually are. It's a real word. Trust me. Don't bother to look it up or anything. Just don't try to use it in Scrabble or Words with Friends.

Rounding the bend of March that year, on a Friday afternoon, Dipper told Mabel, "There's something I want to do that I don't want Wendy to know about."

"Hey, Wendy!" Mabel immediately yelled, "Dipper's got a big, big secret!" Then she giggled like a loon on Smile Dip.

"Come on, act like an eighteen-year-old! Sheesh, Sis, if you're going to be that way—" Dipper said.

"Ease off, Brobro," Mabel said, still gurgling with laughter. "Wendy won't be back from her field trip for two hours."

"But if you're going to be that way," Dipper said. "I won't even—"

"It's her _birthday_ ," Mabel said. "You're planning a surprise party! That's it, isn't it?"

"Mabel! Uh—yeah. Yes, it is," Dipper said.

"In your face, Sherlock bleeding Holmes!' Mabel yelled, punching the air. "My unerring deductive powers win again!"

"As long as you don't let her guess what we're planning," Dipper said. "Are you ready for your flight tomorrow?"

Tomorrow meant Saturday, March 31. Dipper and Wendy had agreed to drive Mabel to Medford, Oregon, where at the Rogue Valley Airport she could catch a Delta flight to Atlanta, Georgia—Teek, off south of that Southern city studying film production, had assured Mabel that this gave her the most direct flight. And then Delta would whisk her nearly three thousand miles across the country, and late that afternoon Teek would meet her at the Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, reputedly the busiest in the country. And since _she_ was on Spring Break until April 8, and since _he_ was on Spring Break for exactly the same week, they'd spend seven glorious days doing whatever engaged young couples do.

Teek was nineteen, close to twenty, still too young to rent a car, but not too young to _borrow_ a car, and his roommate Les had a six-year-old Carino (Mabel's first car had been a Carino she'd named Helen Wheels), and Les was off that whole week on a Caribbean cruise with his mom, dad, and sisters. He wouldn't need the car. His dad was going to drive him back to school after the cruise ended on Sunday, April 8. Les had told Teek to use his car as much as he liked, only wind up with a full tank of gas and check the oil, it might need half a quart in the next week, depending on mileage.

Teek had agreed. He would have to get Mabel back to the Atlanta airport early on the morning of that April Sunday, and by the time Les hauled back into campus, she'd probably be between planes in Salt Lake City.

Mabel could hardly contain herself, and Teek was eagerly looking forward to seeing her again. He didn't know exactly what they would do—there were things to see and things to enjoy in the area, from a very nice zoo to parks and museums and the Atlanta Center for Puppetry Arts (he'd actually visited and thought she'd really like that), the campus of the college of film studies, and so on and so on and hugging and kissing, et cetera.

"It'll be like a prunnymoon," a hyper Mabel had told Dipper.

"A which with the what now?: he asked.

"Prunnymoon! Pre-honeymoon! Weren't you paying attention when the narrator made that crack about being prewildered?"

"I hate when you break the fourth wall," Dipper muttered.

Good man, Dipper. Good man.

* * *

It was sort of weird and sort of annoying that Wendy's invasive-species class had a day-long field trip scheduled for the last Friday before Spring Break began, but those are the, um, breaks. She and forty-seven other students (there were two classes of that particular ecology course) got on a bus and rode for forty-five minutes inland and into the heart of Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park.

They disembarked at a Visitors' Center, which reminded Wendy strongly of the Mystery Shack, except redwoods were real and most of the junk in the Mystery Shack museum were fakes dreamed up by Stan and sewn, glued, and nailed together by Soos. Dr Deavers explained they would explore the environment along the hiking trails and record any invasive plant species they saw by taking photos and noting the locations.

"How about invasive animals?" a student asked him.

"Good luck with that," Deavers said. "There are only a few. One you won't see at all—the barred owl. It's nocturnal, of course. There's a very, very small chance one of you might spot a wild turkey. They were released for a hunting season some years back, with predictable results. However, they haven't been reported in the area of the park we'll be hiking through, so if you hear one or see one, record it."

"What do turkeys sound like?" a boy asked him.

Agnes, a grad student with a snarky streak, said, "The turkey says 'Gobble-gobble,' Nick."

"Wendy, do a turkey call," Deavers said.

Wendy made a face— _Do I have to_?—but since Deavers knew she was capable, she fixed her mouth the right way and gave the trilling, squeaky warble of a turkey call, followed by the sound of a brooding turkey hen, which sounded a bit like a crazy elderly person laughing. The other students cheered and applauded.

"Now do a farm turkey!" one of the guys yelled.

"They're the same species," Wendy said. "Domestic turkeys have been bred to be big fat biological disasters, but they sound the same, except they vocalize about five times as much as a wild turkey does."

"Why's that?" the guy asked.

Wendy shrugged. "When you're a bird that people love to hunt down and kill, you learn that shooting your mouth off is a good way to get your head shot off, I guess."

"Can you do the—what was it—barred owl?" another student asked.

"Oh, please," Wendy said. "I don't want to show off."

"Do it! Do it! Do it!" they chanted.

Wendy sighed and imitated the _hoo-hoo-woo-hoo-ha-hoo-ha-hoo_ barred-owl call. "Is that close?" she asked Dr. Deavers.

"Pretty damn close," he said admiringly. "I won't ask you to show the difference between that and the great horned owl."

He handed out clipboards and pens. "Everybody got a camera?"

"Cell phones OK?" someone asked.

"As long as you can take a clear photo, fine. I want you to look for invasive species—there's a long list on the first page of your booklet, but I included no pictures, because you have to show me you've learned something by recognizing specimens on your own. An 'A' grade is correctly identifying a minimum of eight non-native species of plant on the trail we're taking, so look sharp."

It really wasn't that bad. It was nice to be out in the forest on a nice springy day with the temperature in the low seventies and clear skies overhead. The trail wound on for more than five miles, though it doubled back around a hairpin turn and took a straighter shot on the way to the visitors' center.

Still, they walked for more than seven miles, over three and a half hours or so. Wendy was at ease with that. Some of the students got very tired, though. Those who had not bothered with hiking boots wound up with blisters. Others, perhaps not realizing what it was like to go on a hike through a forest, wound up seccretly doing what bears are known to do in the woods.

Wendy was able to wait until she got back to a more or less civilized bathroom. Then, waiting for the rest of the group to come dragging in, she browsed around the visitors' center for a while. Dr. Deavers returned and came over to look at her spotting list. "How'd you do?"

"Check it out, sir," she said.

He cast his eyes over her spotting list.

* * *

_Bull thistle_

_Creeping buttercup_

_Scotch broom_

_Queen Anne's lace_

_Himalayan blackberry_

_Common sheep sorrel_

_English daisy_

_Foxglove_

_Klamath weed_

_Narrow leaf plantain_

_Common groundsel_

* * *

"Nice, if they're all confirmed."

He asked to see the photos, and Wendy pulled them up on her phone and went through the list. "Would've been a whole lot easier if they were blooming," she said. "Some of these are tough to identify when you can't see the flowers."

"Where was the _Cytisus scoparius_?" he asked. "I haven't spotted that one."

"The Scotch broom?" Wendy asked. "You know the place where the five redwoods are growing on the edges of a clearing about thirty feet across? Right in there. You just have to go through the clearing to the far side and look down among the roots."

"I'll make a note to check that out. Good work, Wendy. You get an A on the project." He handed the sighting list back to her. "Drop this in the collection box on the bus and be sure you email me the photos. What are you doing over Spring Break?"

"Well, my sister-in-law is going off on a trip, so Dipper and I are planning to drive up to Gravity Falls. We have a place there we can always stay, it's fine if we take the dog with us, and we can be there for the grand spring opening of the Mystery Shack."

Deavers smiled. "Yes, you've talked about that place! This summer Ann and I will have to schedule a trip up to Oregon just to see this tourist trap!"

"I think you'd enjoy it," Wendy said. "Of course, the monsters and stuff you'll hear about are mostly imaginary, but it's in the heart of a really beautiful valley with a spectacular waterfall. If you do decide to visit, get in touch with me by email first, and I'll get you free passes to the Mystery Shack."

"Good deal," he said. "Mr. Prater! How many did you bag?"

"I got six," Prater said.

"Enough for at least a B. Want to go look for one or two more?"

Prater, who was sweating and red-faced, said, "I like the B."

As he went through his list with the teacher, Wendy bought a snack and then phoned Dipper—he was out of class by that time—and told him she'd be home before five. "How's Mabes?" she asked.

"How do you think? I'll bet she sets her alarm for four o'clock tomorrow because we have to leave for Medford at six-thirty. I've packed most of our luggage, but she's still working on how much she can cram into two suitcases. Hope we can squeeze all Mabel's stuff in my car with room left over for us and Tripper."

"We'll manage it," Wendy said. "That way we won't have to backtrack here, we'll just drive straight to Gravity Falls."

"Oh, Mabel says we have to go up to your aunt's farm to say hi to her pigs for her."

"No problem, dude," Wendy said. "Sallie's always glad to see us."

"And since we don't want to go off and leave dirty dishes, I thought we'd eat out tonight. Is that all right?"

Wendy chuckled. "I had enough cooking while living in Casa Catastrophe to last me a long time. Any meal we can get in a restaurant is great with me."

"It's a date," Dipper said.

"You sweet, romantic fool, you," Wendy said. "You've won my heart."

"I'll take good care of it," he promised.

* * *


	2. Happy Landings

**That Day in May**

_(April-May 2018)_

* * *

**2-Happy Landings**

An ordinary human would have been very tired after rising at five in the morning, being driven 100-odd miles from Crescent City, California to Medford, Oregon, boarding a small commuter jet for the two and three-quarters hour flight to Salt Lake City, and then having to change planes—while remembering her carry-on and hoping that her checked suitcase would make the transfer with her.

But Mabel Pines was no ordinary human. Even when she hadn't touched Smile Dip for years. Well, for several months, anyhow.

Her first plane landed in SLC at a few minutes past noon, local time, and it took Mabel about thirty minutes to find the departure gate for the second leg of the trip. This one was in a much larger aircraft, a Boeing 767, and she had seat 18-A. It was a window seat, not in first class, but at least in business class.

Though not a worrier, Mabel fretted a bit about the flight, or more specifically about uncontrolled barfing during the flight. Fortunately, she never got seriously carsick, and the two-hour drive to Medford meant that she had digested her breakfast well enough not to pass the time passing her cereal, banana, and milk back up. Flying was harder for her than car travel, and in the air, Mabel had a notoriously weak stomach. For the flight to Atlanta, she intended just to nibble a bit and drink from the bottle of water she'd been allowed to carry aboard. Dipper had warned her to stay hydrated.

The flight from Salt Lake City was to reach an altitude of 37,000 feet, and a little TV screen on the back of the seat ahead of her would allow her to follow the progress of the flight. They took off at 1:10 PM, Utah time, their course for Atlanta a three-and-a-half hour straight shot, no more stops. The time difference, though, meant that they should touch down at about 5:30, Atlanta time. Which—she did some mental arithmetic—meant at 2:30 Pacific, or as Mabel preferred calling it, "real" time.

"Teek will owe me lunch _and_ dinner!" she said as the nose of the plane tilted up toward their planned cruising altitude.

Her seatmate, another college student on spring break (quite tall, thin, and male), popped an earbud out and asked, "Sorry. Were you talking to me?"

"No, but you're a cutie!" she told him. "Too bad I'm engaged! When do we get food?"

"I think we have to level out first," the boy said.

Eventually the plane did level out, and thanks to their having seats near the front of the airplane, the service cart arrived pretty promptly. When the male attendant—moderately cute himself, but probably too old for flirting purposes—asked if she wanted anything to drink, she decided to risk a ginger ale. That was usually safe. And a tiny packet of small pretzels was a salty enough snack to quell any resulting nausea. Probably.

It worked. She didn't get sick. She even gazed out the window, onto a landscape that looked like a snowfield, really the brilliant white tops of clouds. Funny how even the desert was hidden down there somewhere.

After a while, the captain announced that they were actually well ahead of schedule because of a strong tail wind. "It's a nice day on the ground in Atlanta," he said. "Temperature's gonna be, uhhhhh . . . in the mid-seventies, light winds, uhhhhh . . . only a twenty per cent cloud cover. Should be smooth flying, and you're free to move about the cabin, uhhhh . . . but please while you're in your seats do us a big favor and keep your seat belts fastened. Sit back and enjoy the flight."

The movie offerings were "AI Uprising" and "Woody Woodpecker," neither of which appealed to Mabel. Instead, she watched a few TV episodes, old ones—"Friends," "The Big Bang Theory," like that.

Somewhere over probably Mississippi—she guessed—she went to the bathroom, which opened her eyes to how tiny a bathroom could be. She made a mental note to ask Dipper what happened when you flushed. It didn't seem fair that some unsuspecting person on the ground could be bombarded or showered, but she didn't know how it worked.

The plane tilted downward not long after that. Then the pilot announced they were over Georgia and would be in the landing pattern in half an hour. She looked out the window. They had descended beneath the now wispy clouds. She saw lush green hills, rounded, not mountains like Oregon. A river wound through the forest like a sleeping silver serpent. Suddenly bulging out of the dark-green trees, a big round ball of white granite appeared. "What's that?" Mabel asked her seatmate.

He craned to look out the window. "Uh . . . Stone Mountain. About twenty miles east of Atlanta. We're real close now."

"Are you from Atlanta?" she asked. He had a Southern accent.

He blinked his big brown eyes. "Me? No. I was born in Eatonton—that's a ways south of Atlanta—but I was lucky enough to get a basketball scholarship to BYU."

"Oh, you're an athlete?" she asked. Now that she was paying attention, the dark guy next to her was definitely tall and lanky.

"Oh, yeah," he said. "I'm Den Clayton. Point guard for the Cougars."

"My brother's a track star!" Mabel said. "Well—he runs, anyhow. At Western Alliance in Crescent City, California. I go to an art college near there. Are you on your way to Florida?"

Clayton grinned. "Once you start, you go, don't you? No, I'm going home for Spring Break to see my Mama. She kind of misses me. I haven't seen her since Christmas."

"Oh, well, have a good time! I'm not going to Florida, either. I'm spending Spring Break with my fiancé."

The pilot butted in: "Ladies and gentlemen, we should be touching down in less than thirty minutes now. I'm gonna uhhhh . . . ask you to return your seats to their full upright position, close and latch those trays for me, and be sure your seat belt is fastened. The attendants are making one last pass through the cabin to collect any trash you need to dispose of. Thank you for flying with us today!"

They made a smooth landing, taxied far enough—Mabel thought—to get halfway to Florida from there, and finally pulled in and parked at a gate. People stood up and started rummaging luggage from the overhead bins, but it took another seven or eight minutes for the door, between Business and First Class on the port side, to open. "Have a good spring break, Clayton!" Mabel said. "Oh, by the way, my name's Mabel!"

"Good old-fashioned name," he said. "Nice meeting you."

He very kindly took her carry-on bag down and handed it to her as she stood. They joined the shuffling crowd and, as they say, de-planed.

Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport is large. It has its own Chamber of Commerce, and, some people swear, its own micro-climate. Mabel emerged from the jetway, asked an employee at a desk where her checked luggage would be, and got directions for what turned out to be a marathon journey. She paused long enough to phone Teek.

"Hi!" he said as soon as his phone rang. "You here?"

"No, I'm here," she said. "You're there. OK, I'm on concourse C, and they tell me I have to board a train to get to baggage claim. Is that true?"

"Oh, you can walk," Teek said. "But take the train. Look for the escalators down—there'll be signs. Pro tip, go up toward the front of the boarding area—the middle and rear seats fill up the fastest. I got your flight number, so I'll be right here in baggage claim to meet you. Love you!"

"Love you, too! OK, I'm looking for the train station." She dialed Dipper's number as she walked. "Hi!" she said when he answered. "I'm safe on the ground in Atlanta!"

"Great!" Dipper said. "Let's face-time. How was the flight?"

She changed to face-time mode. "It was OK. I didn't eat much, so I'm gonna ask Teek to take me someplace nice. What time is it there?"

"Um—just now three."

"It's six here. Where are you walking, Brobro?"

"I'm there now. Say hi to Mabel!"

The picture on her phone screen spun and then she saw a fat, happy, pink face. "Waddles!" she yelled. "How are you, piggy doll?"

Oink, Waddles told her, reacting to her voice. His daughter, Widdles, was nearly as big as her dad now, and she gruntled happily when Mabel greeted her. "Scratch their ears for me!" Mabel said.

As he did, Dipper said, "Wendy's Aunt Sallie says hi. She's invited us to dinner this afternoon. Fried chicken."

"Great! Now I wish I'd stayed with you. Train! Train! Better hang up. I'll call you tomorrow, Dipdop!"

"OK, Sis. Say hi to Teek for us."

She had to stand clinging to a pole on the train, which was more like a subway, but the ride to baggage claim wasn't too bad. When she stepped out of the train car, she spied ahead the two longest and most crowded escalators she'd ever seen. The Delta baggage claim area was at the top, off to the left.

As she rolled her carry-on bag through throngs of spring-breakers, she saw a familiar figure ahead of her, a black-haired guy a little taller than she was, wearing white sneakers, jeans, and, over a white shirt, a sweater she recognized because she had knitted it, light blue with an appliqué of a reel of movie film on the chest. "Teek!" she yelled. Grinning, he opened his arms, and she flung herself into his hug. "Mmm-wah! I love you so much! Where can we pick up my suitcase? How soon can we eat?"

"As soon as you want," he said. "I already collected your checked suitcase. This is it, right?"

"It is! You have ESP!" she said as he hefted a pink suitcase with its surface mostly covered with rainbow, star, and smiley-face stickers. "Take me where there's good food!"

It was a happy landing.

* * *

Turning back the clock a little way, after Dipper and Wendy had dropped Mabel off at the Rogue Valley airport that morning, they had taken Tripper for a short walk in a grassy place, to his great relief, and then had taken Route 62 North. It was the shortest way to Gravity Falls.

Dipper had driven to the airport, so Wendy took the wheel for the next stretch. They chatted a little as they passed into hilly, then mountainous countryside. After a while, Wendy said, "I think this may be a better route than the way we usually take. Little slower, but not as much traffic, and the road's not bad."

"It's twisty, though," Dipper said. That much was true, but a road through such hilly territory was bound to be. "I hope Mabel's flight goes OK."

Wendy chuckled. "Yeah, you warned her like six times not to miss the connection in Salt Lake City. I think she's all right on her own. Don't worry too much."

"I know," Dipper said. "But she gets distracted. I'd hate for her to call us and ask us to drive down and straighten out a mess."

"She'll be fine. She can always depend on the kindness of strangers."

Which was true. Mabel had a knack of getting what she needed either by flattery and flirting, by puppy-eyed pleading, or as a last resort from being just irritating enough to prompt somebody to do something short of kicking her out of the place. As they passed through pretty countryside—past Lost Creek Lake and then into the Umpqua National Forest—even Dipper relaxed.

They had dropped Mabel off a few minutes before eight. By ten-thirty they were well underway and stopped for a rest break and a change of drivers near Diamond Lake, again letting Tripper stretch his doggy legs. Then Wendy took the wheel again, and they drove into Gravity Falls just before noon.

Wendy drove straight to the Shack—not yet open, but they could tell Soos had been at work, because the signs had been freshly re-painted and, surprise, the parking area now had a layer of blacktop and was no longer just gravel and hard-packed dirt. A little kid came running around the house and yipped with joy when he saw Tripper. The feeling was mutual.

"Hi, Soosie!" Dipper said.

Soos and Melody's son was rolling over and over, dog-wrestling, but he jumped up. "Hi, Dipper! Hi, Wendy! Where's Mabel?"

"Aw, she couldn't make this trip," Wendy said. "But she said to tell you hi, and she made something for you. We'll give it to you when we unpack."

"Can I carry stuff for you?" he asked. He wasn't as hefty as Soos, but he was a solid kid now, a preschooler, and he loved to show how much he could lift.

"I think we've got it, thanks, man," Dipper said. "Why don't you give Tripper a good run around the yard? He's had a long car ride, and he needs some exercise."

"I'm on it!" Little Soos said, and he and the dog went running off at top speed.

Soos greeted them just inside the gift shop—"Welcome home to your home, like, away from home, dudes!" and they greeted Melody, Harmony, and Abuelita, who was busy with lunch. "I hope you are hungry!" she said.

They had a Mexican lunch, moved their suitcases upstairs—Soos offered them the guest room, but Wendy insisted on the attic—and then they explained they had told Aunt Sallie they'd see her and drove up to her farm, where the tall, angular woman greeted them with hugs and grins.

"Let me look at you!" she said, holding Wendy at arm's length. "My second sight tells me you enjoy marriage. Is that not true?"

"It's true," Dipper said, grinning. "It's great!"

"Well, let me tell you the great big secret. My husband, Mr. Bellone, and I agreed early in our marriage that, no matter what, we'd never go to bed angry. We had a long and happy marriage because of that!"

"We'll take it to heart," Wendy told her.

"Now, you're staying for dinner, and don't argue with me about that," Sallie said. "I'm frying a big batch of chicken, and Danny's driving up just for the occasion."

"Dad's coming?" Wendy asked.

"Yes, I invited Danny specially. You can see your brothers later, Wendy—they're all too busy to come visit an old lady—but your dad and you and Dipper need a good quiet place where Danny feels comfortable to sit and chat. He'll want to hear all about what you've been up to!"

"Sounds good to me," Dipper said. "Oh, we have to call Mabel when her plane gets to Atlanta. She'll be worried about her pigs."

Sallie snorted. "They're blooming!" she said. "Fine and fat and happy. When you call, be sure to tell her I said hello, and tell her my chickens want to see her next summer."

Later, Sallie had a few things to do out in the barn, things she said Dipper and Wendy would be no help at, so the two of them sat in a couple of rocking chairs on her front porch and enjoyed the afternoon sunshine and the view across the hills. "I think this week's gonna be just what I needed," Wendy said. "A good old lazy time in good old Gravity Falls."

"With a minimum of Gnomes and other complications," Dipper said.

"No complications," she said. "Just lazing and loving, Dip."

"I like the sound of that," he told her. "But no complications? In Gravity Falls?"

"Well," Wendy said, smiling, "maybe just little ones."

* * *


	3. Awakening

**That Day in May**

_(April-May 2018)_

* * *

**3-Awakening**

_O, what is so fair as a morning in May?_

_When Nature stirs at break of day,_

_And rosy Dawn doth lend sweetly her love_

_To cheer all God's creatures below and above._

_And warm, we awaken, and lo! In my eye_

_Is your fair image, love, so let us lie_

_To dally awhile in this new blessed light,_

_And stay in our bed 'til again it is night._

_-The Ballad of May, author unknown_

_OK, it was really only April 1. But for two young couples it felt more like May, that lusty month...._

* * *

Mabel drifted up out of sleep, into that pleasant foggy place between dream and awareness, conscious that her cheek was warmly pillowed and that someone had his arm around her, his hand resting on her bare hip. She sighed happily.

"Morning!" Teek said.

"Mm, I'm really really here," she murmured. "And you're really here, and what time is it?"

"Kinda late," Teek said, moving so they lay face to face. He kissed her, and for a few moments they concentrated on that. "It's about nine-thirty," he said.

"What? In the freaking morning?" she asked.

He patted her bottom. "You're still on Pacific time. It's twelve-thirty in California. Want to go out for some breakfast?"

She hooked a leg over his. "Not necessarily."

"Are you sure you're Mabel?"

"You could check me out to be certain." She threw the sheet and blanket completely off the bed. "Take a good look!"

Someone tapped on a door and called out, "Housekeeping!"

"Whoops!" Mabel pushed away, rolled to her tummy, and leaned way out of bed to grab the discarded covering.

For a moment Teek just admired the view before reassuring her: "That's next door. I hung the 'Do Not Disturb' sign on your door."

"That's a relief." She gave up on blanket-fishing and he helped pull her back onto the bed. This time she rolled on top of him. "Gotcha pinned," she whispered.

"How about one round, and then we shower and go get breakfast?" he asked.

"How can you think of eating at a time like this?" she murmured, kissing her way down his neck and chest.

"I can't help it," he admitted.

The evening before, after a heroic meal at the Historic Brick Manor—an old plantation house once upon a time, now a stylish Southern-themed restaurant—she and Teek had checked into the Hospitality Suites as Mr. and Mrs. T. K. O'Grady, which felt both wicked and exciting. They splurged on a deluxe room on the second floor, with a view out over the Chattahoochee River, not as big as the Columbia, and oddly reddish-brown, but scenic anyway. They had a queen-sized bed, a balcony, a huge bathroom with a spa tub big enough for two, and they were only about ten miles west of Teek's college.

So that morning they celebrated. And for a change, Teek was the one who was so hungry he could hardly think of anything else. Much. Well, a few things. After a quarter of an hour, they lay side by side, panting. "Man," Mabel said, "that was good!"

"I noticed you liked the greens and bacon," Teek said.

She elbowed him. "I didn't mean dinner last night! But, yeah, the steak was so tender, and the—yams?"

"Sweet potato soufflé," Teek said.

"Yeah, that, mm! And the strange kind of greens—arugula?"

Teek laughed. "Turnip greens."

"Whatever, I liked them. They taste weird, but it grows on you! Speaking of which—" she glanced down at him—"we have to work on your stamina, Teek. Wendy says Dipper's good for at least a half-hour and then right away ready to rumble again!"

"Must be Pines genes," he said. "Speaking of which, let's shower and you can put yours on and we'll go get breakfast!"

They showered and dressed and as Mabel dried her hair, Teek sat on the foot of the bed and flipped through the hotel-room literature. When Mabel came out, looking good in her tight jeans and a pink sweater with an appliqué of a peach that at first blush looked like a shapely lady bending over as seen from the back, Teek said, "How about room service? We could eat on the balcony."

"Sold!" Mabel said. "Two of everything! Then order something for yourself."

Teek talked her into throttling back, so in the end, being adventurous, she ordered two eggs over medium, turkey bacon, fresh home-made biscuits with peach jam, and—grits.

"You may not like the grits," Teek cautioned. "It took me a while to get used to them."

"I'll taste 'em."

By the time the meals arrived, the morning was far advanced. They took their tray to the balcony, Mabel poured coffee for both of them, and they dug in. "Grits are sort of different," Mabel said. "But I like them!"

They savored the coffee—really tasty—and then Teek said, "I thought today if you want, we'll go tour around the campus. There's a skeleton staff who keep the buildings open, except for the libraries and production spaces, but I do have a key to the studio where we're making our student film, and my student ID will keep the campus cops from chasing us out. It's a nice place, so I thought we might spend the morning there, and then drive north into Atlanta, have lunch, and maybe catch a movie or go to one of the parks."

"I'm putty in your hands," Mabel said.

"If the weather had warmed up, we could even go tubing," Teek said.

"What?"

Teek pointed at the river. "Drifting down the river on a big inner tube."

She gave him a don't-kid-me kind of glance. "That's a thing?"

"When the weather's warm. Lot of the students do it on weekends. They call it 'shooting the Hooch.'"

"As in bourbon?"

"No, as in Chattahoochee," Teek said.

"What's that mean?"

"The name? I don't know. It's the Chattahoochee River, and it's from a Native American word, I think."

"Doesn't matter." Mabel stretched and sighed. "I am happy."

"That was my goal," Teek said.

"Congratulations. You made it. OK, take me to the Georgia College of Arts and Film. I'll promise to be impressed."

They removed the "Do Not Disturb" door hanger from the knob and went down to the parking lot, where Teek's borrowed Carino—dark blue and interestingly dented—waited. "I'm gonna get some gas first and check the oil," he said. "I promised Les to be careful about that. His car needs a little work."

"It's not as nice as Helen Wheels was," Mabel said nostalgically. "But it's a gutsy car, anyway."

Teek gassed up. In Oregon, you couldn't pump your own fuel, but that seemed to be the norm in Georgia, and he impressed Mabel by knowing how to check the oil level. It was fine.

So they set off after eleven, drove to the campus, and as if he owned the place, Teek proudly showed his girl around.

* * *

That morning, way west in Gravity falls, and at about five-thirty AM, Wendy woke Dipper up in the most pleasant way possible. They embraced each other—they had shoved the two beds in the attic room together so they'd have reasonable room for athletics—and each opened his or her mind and feelings. When Dipper gave her gentle kisses right there, he felt the same sensation she did. And when she reciprocated by gently caressing him there, she felt what he felt.

There was a reason that Dipper could last longer than most young guys. To speak metaphorically, he did not rush up the mountain to stand on the peak, but took his time, hand in hand with Wendy savoring every step of their way, until he and his partner reached the summit at exactly the same delicious, long-delayed moment.

True, most of us wouldn't exhaust ourselves mountain climbing only to go limp on the very tip-top of the peakiest peak while calling out, "Yeah!" as they both did simultaneously.

On that particular morning, Wendy lay on her tummy, and her tummy lay on Dipper, who treasured the long soft warmth of his girl as they kissed and snuggled and sighed. "Good one," Wendy said. "I think the mountain air makes me a little bit wild."

"Hope we didn't wake Soos and Melody," Dipper said.

"I think they'd understand." She wriggled excitingly against him. "Wanna go for a run?"

He stroked her long, lean, interestingly curved back. "Let me think about that."

"Mm. yeah, I feel something stirring. Maybe we could work out in a different way. I think you're up for it—or getting there!"

They adjusted positions, took their time, and son of a gun, right up an even taller mountain.

"I don't think we could top that one for a few hours," Dipper panted.

"Not this morning, anyway. God, I love not having anything to do but this!"

However, the two did have a limit, and so as Mabel and Teek had already done, they rose, showered (together) and dressed. Tripper joined them at the foot of the stair, they let him outside—he was perfectly at home in the Shack and they didn't have to worry about him getting into trouble—and joined Soos and Melody for breakfast. "It's so good to see you back," Melody said. She wouldn't let them lift a finger, but served them a piping hot breakfast casserole with a side of ham and hot, cinnamon-dusted cooked apple slices.

"How was your aunt?" Melody asked.

"Fine," Wendy said. She grinned. "Dad drove up to have dinner with us. He wanted to know how we liked married life, if we were studying hard, how we liked college—you wouldn't believe how much we talked!"

"Yeah," Soos said. "Manly Dan's not much for conversation. He's like, more of a yelling dude."

"He misses Wendy," Dipper said. He reached to hold her hand. "I can't blame him."

"Plus he wanted to ask us something," Wendy added. "I'm not sure he wants everybody to know yet, so I won't say anything, but he wanted our advice about something."

"It's a surprise," Dipper said.

"Oh, I love surprises!" Soos said. "If I guess it, will you tell me if I'm right?"

"That would spoil the surprise," Melody said.

"You're right!" He straightened up in his chair and took on a serious expression. "Soos will speak no more. Oh, except if you want, and you don't have to, but just if you want, you can, like, help me do the inspection today. The Shack opens for the season on April 16 this year, so I got to make sure that everything's spruced up and working right."

Wendy and Dipper were willing. The best part, Dipper thought, was that they'd only have to do this one thing this one day—they'd return to the university more than a week before the Shack was being invaded by tourists again, so they wouldn't actually have to do any work.

So they walked through the Museum, which had a few new exhibits, including a vintage fortune-telling machine that featured a witch who actually shuffled and dealt a pack of Tarot cards and then read your future—all for five cents. "She wasn't working right," Soos said. "I got her from, like, a boardwalk or some deal where she'd been put in storage for fifty years. I tinkered with her and now she does her thing. Want to see?"

"Sure," Wendy said.

"Do de doo de doo, getting a nickel—here we go." Soos dropped the coin in the slot and pulled the handle.

A spotlight came on, and the Witch, a crone with a long, mole-sprouting chin and a crooked nose that bent down almost far enough to touch it, barely opened her eyes to two glistening slits, looked down at the table in front of her, and picked up the oversized deck of cards.

"That's pretty good," Dipper said as the automaton shuffled the deck—not with much speed, but without dropping or bending a card.

Then the Witch paused. "Future days now we may see. Good or evil they may be. Your fate may be mild or hard. Pull the lever if ye would read the cards!" The voice was insinuating, high-pitched, not quite female, not quite male, but every word was distinct and dripped with evil implications.

"How's that recorded?" Dipper said. "It can't be on tape or digital, but it sounds so clear."

"There's this strange great big oversized vinyl record in the base of the cabinet," Soos said. "It's got like a hundred and fifty tracks on it, and the needle drops into the right track for each card, I think. Want her to deal the cards?"

"Go for it," Wendy said, pulling the lever.

The Witch deliberately dealt four cards: the Lovers, the Three of Pentacles, the Chariot (upside down) and a final card which she left face-down.

Then the bony finger touched each card in turn. "You are in love with someone who loves you. Happy are ye if your loves are true."

The hand moved with a slightly jerky twitch to the second card. "Your partnership is well-begun. 'Tis your task to see it well-run."

Then the third card: "Alas, the Chariot reversed doth tell me ye must beware of grim Jealousy."

The finger paused over the fourth card. "Your fate lies face down. Think well ere you see. If I reveal pain or joy, what will be must be!" Then for the first time she raised her head and seemed to stare at them, and Dipper shivered.

"And if you want to see your, like destiny, you put in another nickel and pull the lever again," Soos said.

Wendy asked, "Got a nickel, Dip?"

Dipper reached out and pulled the lever without dropping in a coin. Without revealing the last card, the Witch swept up the four she had dealt, put them on the deck, reshuffled, and the automaton turned itself off.

"Boo! No fair, man. We didn't see our fate!" Wendy said, nudging Dipper.

"I didn't have a nickel," Dipper said.

It was a small thing, one they could easily overlook, but when Dipper and Wendy took the golf cart out on the Mystery Trail to look for anything that might need to be done there—fallen branches to clean up, potholes washed out by winter rains to refill, or malfunctions in the dark-ride portion at the turn-around point—Dipper remained so quiet that Wendy put her hand on the back of his neck and thought to him _That card witch freaked you didn't it?_

— _It gave me a real bad feeling. Not gonna lie about it, Wen._

_Oh, crap. Gravity Falls just lays in wait like a lion watching for a zebra to stroll by doesn't it?_

— _That witch sure doesn't work like a fifty-year-old mechanism. Not like Goldie the Prospector._

_Ugh! I'm glad that thing finally froze up and stopped working. When I was fifteen, it creeped me out so much I had nightmares about it._

— _Yeah, Grunkle Stan went sort of nuts over it. But this—this is different. I had the worst feeling that if she'd turned over that last card, whatever it said would come true. And that the fate it represented would be bad._

_You're holding something back, Dip. I can tell. What is it?_

Dipper stopped the golf cart just inside the spooky-world dark ride part. The electricity didn't seem to be working—none of the figures moved, the lights stayed out, and the music didn't begin. Aloud, he asked, "Did you look at the Witch's eyes?"

"Not real close," Wendy said. She jerked her hand away from his neck as if she'd been burned. "Dip! You're scaring me!"

"The figure," Dipper said, "is all fabric and rubber and glass and a metal skeleton. It's just a kind of mannequin of a witch, just a dumb machine. But I saw her look up at you, Wendy. Her eyes—"

"Glass," Wendy said.

"No. Human eyes. And they were alive."

* * *


	4. Expert Opinion

**That Day in May**

_(March-May 2018)_

* * *

**4-Expert Opinion**

That evening, Grunkle Ford came up from his house. That wasn't unusual. On average, he still spent from eight to twelve hours a week down in his labs—the computer connections from there were ultra-secure, and from there Stanford checked in with the Agency. Then, too, he just had a butt-load of equipment down there and he liked the feel of being at home.

However, on this occasion he made the trip at Dipper's request. Dipper and Wendy told him about Soos's newly-acquired exhibit for the Museum and about the creepy feeling it gave both of them. With ordinary people, Ford would have doubted the story, or at most would merely give an indulgent smile. Wendy and Dipper, though, had been there (so many theres) and done that (all those thats), and Ford listened intently to them. "Let's take a look," he said.

After a working day of touching up the Shack, plus re-wiring the electrics in the Dark Ride—squirrels evidently had developed a taste for the plastic insulation of wires—Soos had taken Abuelita, the kids, and Melody to the mall, where they planned to have dinner and see a movie. Dipper and Wendy had begged off—tired after the trip, et cetera—and that gave them and Ford some time to inspect the fortune-telling witch.

Soos usually locked the Museum and gift shop, but as the summer manager, Wendy had her own set of keys. Dipper turned on the overhead lights in the Museum, low-wattage because the sloppy exhibits looked better in dim light. It was enough to see, though, and Ford carefully unscrewed the flanges holding the front square of glass and he and Dipper then gingerly set it aside.

The mock desk inside the glass partition was dust-free. Ford picked up and examined the deck of cards. "Hm. The Visconti-Sforza deck. Hand-painted. Possibly a late imitation, but if not, this deck might even date back to the fifteenth century—they look like the few surviving examples."

"What does that mean?" Wendy asked.

"It means they represent the oldest known Tarot deck in Europe," Ford said. "They're so old, in fact, that they weren't originally known as Tarot, but _Tronfi_ cards. They were commissioned by the Duke of Milan and by his son-in-law. Back in that era, the cards weren't used so much as instruments of divination, but as elements in games, the way a normal deck is today. Soos should know that this complete deck, if authentic, is probably worth as much as the entire Mystery Shack. No one knows how many sets Duke Visconti and Francesco Sforza ordered to be produced, but there are fewer than twenty individual cards known to exist from other decks, and all of them are in museums. Help me remove the side panel of the base."

Again they wielded a screwdriver. Ford knelt down and shined a flashlight into the automaton's workings. The panel turned out not to be plywood, as Dipper thought it must be, but a half-inch sheet of wood from some large tree. "Very complex," Ford murmured as the flashlight beam lit up silver and bronze components. "This is interesting. This large cast-iron gear here was originally operated by a hand crank. You can see the cup that held the crank mounting. The mechanism may not have been enclosed in a compete box as it is now, or perhaps a large hole in the original side panel let the crank handle turn freely. Now, see this chain drive? At some point the machine was wired for electricity and the coin slot and switches were installed. An electric motor now turns the main gear, but the tape roller and drive chain are no longer connected." Ford got a long forceps and reached deep in among gears and cogs and pulled out a strip of thick but brittle tan paper about half an inch wide and close to six inches long. It had perforations along both sides, like a strip of movie film.

"Hold the flashlight for me," Ford said, handing it to Dipper. "Put the light on here. There was writing, but it's faded almost completely." Frowning in concentration at the faint brown marks on the brittle paper, he read, ". . . _eux consumeront tes os et malheur à ta maison et à ta. . . ."_

"French?" Dipper asked.

"Yes, but this is just a torn section of a longer tape, and parts of the message are missing. I imagine the first word should be _feux_ , fire, flames. 'Fire shall consume your bones and evil,' um, or maybe 'bad luck, shall come to your house and your'—something."

"Is that a curse?" Wendy asked.

"I think it's probably a prophecy," Ford said. "Judging from the apparent age of the paper strip and the penmanship, the reel-to-reel paper tape dates from around 1850, given thirty years each way."

"The witch is that old?" Dipper asked.

"Physically older. The paper tapes would wear out and have to be replaced, I imagine. Judging from the mechanical components, the device itself must date back to the eighteenth century. The wooden base is newer. Possibly the original one deteriorated and had to be replaced."

"This is like The Writer," Dipper said. When Wendy gave him a puzzled glance, he explained, "The Writer is a doll-sized clockwork robot. It's all mechanical and goes back to about 1770. A Swiss watchmaker built it. It can be wound up and it uses a quill pen and ink to write messages, and it can be programmed to write different notes. It's in a museum and it still works."

"Mason is correct," Ford said, as if he were conducting a class. "For decades Europeans were fascinated by such automata—they ranged from chess players to harpsichordists to acrobatic clowns. Now, as I say, the base cabinet of this one isn't as old as the top parts, the mechanism and the Witch effigy. I think the great age of the automaton explains the paper tape."

"What was it for?" Dipper asked. "Did the Witch write out the predictions?"

"No, small irregularities mean this is human handwriting. But when the machine first operated, the phonograph was still more than a century away. I imagine that once the full spools of this paper tape ran as the cards were laid down and the writing revealed the messages through a display window. Instead of hearing a voice, people would read on the paper strip what the cards purportedly predicted."

"Maybe four different windows," Wendy suggested. "One for each card. Later somebody gave her a voice, huh?"

Ford looked inside the cabinet again. "A phonograph. There's the oversized turntable. I believe that the electric, ah, overhaul took place between about 1925 and 1950. The first commercial phonograph disks, as opposed to cylinders, went on the market around 1910. The one I see here, just below the automaton, is more modern and the record is extraordinarily large, thirty inches in diameter or thereabout. I see an amplifier that I'd guess would date back no further than the 1930s. I wouldn't be surprised if it were an even later addition, installed after the machine had been converted to use records." He took out a pocket notebook. "To save time, would one of you jot down some notes as I describe this?"

"Got it," Wendy said, taking the notebook. Dipper handed her one of his pens. Kneeling and peering into the cabinet, Ford called out his observations, Wendy wrote them down, and eventually, Ford got to his feet and said, "That's as much as I can glean from the workings. Let's postpone replacing the side panel."

He stood in front of the machine and leaned close to examine the mannequin more closely. "The hands have deteriorated some. See the little pinholes? Insect damage, or natural shrinkage. As for the movement of the hands, I believe they're fashioned of lambskin over articulated metal 'bones' operated by spring 'tendons.' The nails are painted glass. The skin on the face is probably lambskin, too. The eyebrows and hair look human, very desiccated. I'm going to pluck a few strands from the head and one eyebrow for DNA testing and carbon dating. Mason, please bring me an envelope and a blank sheet of paper."

Dipper got them from the office—official Mystery Shack stationery—and Ford carefully folded the hairs inside the paper, slipped that into the envelope, sealed it, and wrote "Automaton" where the address would normally go. He handed it to Wendy, who tucked it into the notebook.

"Now," Ford said, "let's examine those eyes."

He reached in and used his thumb to raise her right eyelid. The left one also opened, as if both eyelids were on the same pivot.

"That's not how they looked," Dipper said. The two eyes that Ford revealed had faded brown irises, with glazed, dusty-looking black pupils.

"Glass, but very old," Ford said.

Wendy shook her head. "These aren't what we saw, Dr. P. She had purple irises."

"Purple?" Ford asked.

"Wendy's right," Dipper said. "And they glistened. I mean, they looked wet. And they moved and acted like living eyes. I saw the pupils contract. Also, they looked like they recognized us. They were evil."

"Maybe if we turned it on," Wendy said.

Ford nodded. "Worth a try. A coin triggers it?"

"A nickel," Dipper said. "There's at least one in the collection bin on the far side."

"Can you reach it?"

Dipper knelt beside the cabinet and stretched his arm way in. The collection bin for coins was about four inches square and a foot long. He worked it until he felt it slide backward. Friction clips on side and bottom held it in place, and some patience detached it. Only Soos's lone nickel rattled inside. Dipper shook it out on his palm and handed it to Ford before replacing the bin.

Ford studied the humble nickel and said, "Wendy, take this down: the coin is a Jefferson-head American five-cent piece, dated 1966. The reverse side shows Monticello, the home of Jefferson. The coin bears some wear but appears to be genuine and ordinary."

"Would any other nickel do?" Dipper asked. "Is there something special about this one?"

"I don't think so, but you're right. In an investigation, one must look into every possibility," Ford said. "Let me see how much change I have in my pocket." He had a more recent nickel, one minted in 2000."I'll try this one. What's the procedure?"

Dipper said, "Uh, I think Soos turned on the power on the far side there."

"Push-button switch," Wendy said. "I see it."

"Press it, please."

She did, and Dipper heard a hum as the electricity came on. He told Ford, "Now just drop the nickel in the slot." It clicked and clanked as he did so, tripping a second, inner switch. "Now," Dipper said, "I'll pull this lever."

The Witch shivered and came to life. With the panel and the front glass removed, Dipper could hear the clicks as she moved.

"Remarkable," Ford said. "I didn't replace the cards in just the right spot. Look what it's doing."

The bony-looking hands felt along the small level playing area until they found the cards. The Witch turned three of them so they were all face-down, then tapped and straightened the deck. Very deliberately, the eyes apparently staring at the cards, the Witch shuffled the deck, cut it, reversed the top cut, melded the deck, and then reshuffled. Then the hands dealt out the cards, one after the other: the Ace of Pentacles, upside-down; the Devil; the Tower; and a face-down card.

Then the finger moved. Now with the case open, Dipper could hear the hiss as the stylus fell onto the surface of the turning record disc. The forefinger tapped the first card, and the scratchy voice said, "Opportunity hath been lost, good fortune doth flee, and naught but evil followeth thee."

"That doesn't sound like fun," Wendy said.

The finger tapped the Devil, and the needle moved to a new track. "The course ye tread doth doom thy way, nor shalt ye avoid it, whether weep or pray."

"Ominous," Dipper said.

The Tower received the final tap. "Disaster thy lot be cast, lo! thy life doth wane fast."

"And she won't turn the last card unless you drop in another nickel," Dipper said.

"Just pull the lever without putting another coin in," Wendy said.

"I have the other coin," Ford said, reaching into his pocket.

"Nope!" Wendy stretched her arm out quickly to give the lever a tug.

"My word!" Ford said.

"See?" Wendy asked. "That's what scared us."

The witch had raised her head with a jerk. Her expression changed to an angry snarl, and she swept all three of them with a furious glare before gathering up the cards, tapping the deck, and slapping it down before her movements stopped.

"You saw it," Wendy said.

Ford sounded a little shaken: "You were right. For that moment, those eyes were alive. It was a woman's voice, English words spoken distinctly. The pseudo-archaic vocabulary may be based on a literal translation of the original paper tapes. The woman had no distinct accent, but could be British or North American. The recording sounds old but not damaged."

"OK, that's enough," Wendy said. "Let's put the glass and the case back together." She stepped over and unplugged the machine from the electrical outlet. The plug was black, bell-shaped, and old-fashioned, the wire braided and frayed. "Tell you what, Dr. P—let's persuade Soos not to swith this thing on. Tell him it's a rare antique or something, too delicate and valuable to risk operating. Tell him anything."

"I think your instincts are correct," Ford said. "There's something distinctly foreboding about this thing. Mason, if you and Wendy wouldn't mind doing my job and putting the cabinet back together, I need to get some equipment."

Together Wendy and Dipper replaced the screws and tightened them with a couple of Soos's screwdrivers. By the time they finished replacing both wood and glass panels, Ford had returned with his detection devices. He ran the anomaly scanners, the dimensional rift detector, two or three other scans. "Almost all negative, he said. "A small sort of general paranormal spike, but I've seen much larger ones. That's reassuring, anyway. As to preventing it from operating—let me borrow your tools for a few minutes."

He disassembled the plug, did something to the wiring, and then put it back together. "There. The plug will no longer make a workable connection, so the device won't receive electricity. I'll make a point of recommending to Soos that until all the internal and external wiring can be replaced, running it is a hazard and he cannot attempt to plug in or operate the device. It can be an antique, a non-operating exhibit."

"That should be OK," Dipper said. "Now that Soos got rid of Goldie and the fake penny press, none of the mechanical exhibits in the Museum work. If you give him enough information to make a spiel about it as an antique, that will be enough."

"While you're in Gravity Falls," Ford said, "if you can, please find out from Soos exactly what the provenance of the Tarot Witch is. Where did he find it, what condition was it in, and what did he learn about its history? That will help us decide on it. We made need to disassemble or even destroy it."

"What would have happened," Wendy asked, "if we'd let it turn over the last card in the layout?"

"That," Ford said grimly, "is something I'd rather not learn."

They switched off the lights and left the Museum to the darkness and the Witch.

A few seconds later, with a sound as small and dry as sand trickling in an hourglass . . . .

The unplugged Witch opened her eyes.

In the dark, not even needing to look, she began to shuffle the deck. . . .

* * *


	5. Untwinned

**That Day in May**

(April-May 2018)

* * *

**5-Untwinned**

At the Georgia College of Art and Film Studies (known to its students as GCAF) it had been a good day. True, the college was closed for Spring Break, except for those students like Teek who chose to remain, or like the foreign students who remained because travel home was prohibitively expensive.

The college wasn't dead, though, only dozing. Though the library was closed, the bookstore was open—manned only by one student helper and one junior staff member, but open. Teek knew the student, a strikingly pretty girl from India whose name was Pari Joshi. Teek introduced Mabel as his fiancée, and Pari gushed over what a fine cinematographer Teek was—they were on the same student-film production team, she as an actress, he as the director of lighting and camera work.

"Get him to show you some footage," Pari urged Mabel. "It's beautiful!"

"I'll do that!" Mabel said with some—frankly—manufactured enthusiasm. After their brief conversation, Teek showed Mabel around the campus.

"All this used to be a shopping mall," he said. "You can tell from how small the trees are that when they bulldozed all the old mall buildings, they replanted and landscaped."

"She speaks good English," Mabel said.

"I like how they have the big fountain—what?" Teek said. "Who?"

"Your Indian superstar," Mabel said.

"Pari? Her parents both speak perfect English. In fact, they sound British—"

"So you've met her parents?" Mabel asked.

"No, but she does video chats with them, and she introduced me long-distance. Mabel, come on! She has a boyfriend. And you're my fiancée! Don't tell me you're jealous!"

"Not much," she said. "What's that great big round building behind the library?"

"That's where we're going. The recording stages are there, and I can show you a scene or two from _Suspended._ That's our student film. I collaborated on the script—well, I contributed several pages of dialogue, anyway—and I think it's going to be pretty good."

"What's it about? Someone who got kicked out of school?" Mabel asked as they passed the two-story brick library building.

"Not that kind of suspended," Teek said. "Pari plays a girl who came to America to study."

"That must be a hard role for her."

"Come on," he said, shaking his head. "Anyway, of course the girl is Indian, but not like Pari at all. I mean, her family's very traditional and they've chosen a fiancé for her, but in America she meets and falls in love with a boy, and the story is about a week in their lives when she feels suspended between her traditional role as an obedient daughter and her love for this new guy and the new way of life she finds in America."

"A laugh riot," Mabel said.

The production building was like a gigantic Quonset hut, or maybe one of those huge airplane hangers you see in old war movies. Teek stopped outside it, pulled Mabel close, and gave her a long, deep kiss. "What's wrong?" he whispered to her. "Cheer up. Mabel up! I thought you'd like this."

She toyed with the buttons on his shirt. "I don't know what's the matter with me. Maybe it's being so far away from Dipper. I mean, he and I have hardly ever been apart for long, and never this far apart. When you break up a set of twins, I guess you make them nervous. I'm not jealous, not really. I just feel blarghh."

"We don't have to do this today," Teek said. "We could go out to dinner. It's early, but—"

"No, let's go look at your sound set or whatever it's called. You're so enthusiastic about it, and I hate to spoil it for you. Just—sometimes I get these downer feelings. Not often. Just stick with me and I'll ride it out, I promise."

The main entrance to the production building was up a broad set of six concrete steps. It was sort of a weird structure—inside, a security guard sat at a desk watching a small TV. The offices behind him—and the hallway—didn't go to the ceiling far overhead, but only about fifteen feet up. "Henry!" Teek said.

"How you doin', O'Grady?" the security man asked with a broad smile. "You oughta be home. It's Spring Break, didn't they tell you?"

"I live too far away," Teek said. "But look here, my fiancée came all the way from California to visit me! Mabel, this is my friend Henry Caudell, who keeps the building safe. Henry, this is Mabel Pines, who comes from Piedmont, California."

"Pleased to meet you," Caudell said with a courtly—though seated—bow. "Is Mr. O'Grady giving you the grand tour?"

"Yep!" Mabel said. "Is it OK?"

"He's on a production team, so I'm good with that. Have a good time. I have to lock up the front doors in an hour, O'Grady. Don't get caught inside, or the night man might run you in."

"I'll keep an eye on it," Teek said.

The rows of offices and storage rooms ran only a third of the way down the huge building. Then larger spaces took over, four of them—Stages A, B, C, and D. "We're at the end," Teek said. "Stage D because that's reserved just for first- and second-year students. It's a hike!"

They had to follow a hallway to the right, where it took a hard left turn and ran down along the curving wall of the hangar-like building. Each stage was approximately the width of a house. Finally, Teek used his card to unlock the door to Stage D. He switched on work lights. "The set is through here," he said. "It's pretty well soundproofed so our filming doesn't bleed over into Set C or vice-versa. This little area is the place where we can see the rushes—that's the recorded scenes. It's all digital. Editing and post-production are in another building. Have a seat, and I'll bring up some footage."

"Wow, a real movie chair!" Mabel said. It was actually a director's chair, one of those canvas-and-metal folding chairs. The seat and the canvas backrest were of dark blue fabric, with GCAF lettered in white.

Teek started a computer. "It'll show on the monitor right over there," he said. "Hang on, I want to get one exterior and then an interior."

Mabel watched as the monitor came on. It was a night scene, with the campus fountain lighted up and a building visible behind it. Pari, wearing a quilted jacket, and a guy who looked pretty hunky, in a letterman's jacket, stood backlighted by the fountain lights. Hands appeared holding a slate clapboard, on which someone had chalked the information

* * *

**Production "Suspended"**

Scene 12-A Take 4

Director Grifford

Camera O'Grady

3/12/20 EXT Fount

* * *

The person holding the slate said, "Scene twelve A, take 4." The top hinged part clacked loudly, and the slate vanished.

"Quiet!" a girl with an alto voice yelled. The fountain, which made a rushing sound, failed to obey. "Ready camera. Places! OK, action!"

"The clap helps us synchronize the sound later," Teek said. "This is very short."

Pari sat on the ledge of the fountain, her silhouette in a dejected posture. She looked up at the boy and said something that Mabel couldn't hear. He sat down beside her and took her hand and said something else that she couldn't hear.

"And cut!" said the director's alto voice.

Teek fiddled with the controls. "I know, I know. But watch this edited version."

This time the sound of the fountain was muted to background noise, and Mabel could hear the dialogue:

* * *

 _Pari:_ I heard from my father today. He wants me to come home next week.

 _Boy:_ You can't go. You don't want to go. Even if you don't love me, please do what you want, not what they want.

 _Pari:_ (Her voice breaking) That's just it—I do love you. I love you more than anything. But Jimmy—I'm my father's daughter."

* * *

"Same footage," Teek said. "But Pari and Sean looped their lines—they recorded them in the studio—and then the sound tech toned down the water and put their voices in at the right level. Pretty neat, huh?"

"I'm impressed!" Mabel said. "Uh—I gotta admit it, Pari's a pretty good actress."

"I didn't do much with this shot except decide where the camera would be and set up some lights with blue filters to make it look like moonlight. But let me show you what we did last week. Then we can go see the set."

This time the slate identified the scene as 6-B, Take 1, and it had been done on March 27.

It was an interior scene, with Pari in pale pink jammies and propped up in a dorm-room bed, reading a book. Another girl, dressed in semi-goth style and laughing, came into the room. A window showed that it was dark outside.

"What's Lakshmi Hindu for?" the girl asked, tossing a pillow at Pari. "Bookworm?"

Pari fended off the pillow and smiled. "Actually, it's the name of a goddess. You were out late."

"Some of us have a social life," the girl said.

Pari looked hurt. "Don't rub it in," she said, tossing her book aside.

The short scene ended. "That was Pari's character and her roommate, just before the scene where Lakshmi meets Jimmy again—in the backstory, she dated him a few months before, and he can't forget her. Anyhow, come and look."

Teek led Mabel into the set and turned on the work lights. "Whoa!" she said. "This looks way—shabby!" The dorm room consisted of only two walls, with the bed against the one with the window—just looking into a small cubicle with green walls now—and a desk and chair against the other. The colors were dull in the work lights, and everything looked fake. Even the bed—it was just a mattress on a plywood-and-two-by-four platform.

"That's the magic of cinematography," Teek said. The right lights made the walls and bed coverings pop. We did the night scene through the window with a green screen. Composited in a shot of another dorm at night. We do the same for day scenes, except the dorm footage is in sunlight. We could show anything in the window—Paris or the ocean or the surface of the moon. Hey, want to be a movie star?"

"Dahling!" Mabel said.

Teek spread out the quilt that had been left crumpled, covering the tell-tale foot of the mock bed. "No, really. Look, go sit on the bed and I'll shoot some footage of you doing something. I know—sing one of the songs from your senior play."

"Without music? Without my puppet?"

"Fake it," he said. "Hang on and I'll set some lights and then make you look super glamorous."

"I always look—"

"Even more so, then!" Teek said. "We left the lights set up, so I don't have to change anything, really."

He moved her around until she was placed well, then went to the camera. "OK, sing the song as if you're playing Kate—not as a puppet, as a human character. We won't do the slate thing," he said. "I'll count you down from five. Then go!"

"Wait, wait. Let me warm up a little." Mabel went through the scales, then la-la-la'd until she was sure of the key. "Let's do it!"

They filmed Mabel sitting on the foot of the bed and singing Kate Monster's first verse and chorus of "It Sucks to Be Me."

"Perfect!" Teek said. "Let's go see the rushes." He shut down the camera and set lights, and then they went out into the viewing area again to view what he'd just filmed.

"Whoa!" Mabel said again as the recording played. She looked—great. Bouncy and charming. And in the fake window behind her, the blank green screen was replaced with a daylight shot of a brick dorm on a sunny morning. Mabel giggled when she dropped Kate's f-bomb—part of the lyrics—and actually clapped when the chorus ended. "This applause is for you, not me," she said. "I already know I'm great!"

"You are," Teek said. And that called for a kiss.

He erased the video they had just made, but not before burning two memory-stick copies, his and hers. "Souvenir," he said, giving her one. "I'll watch this between now and June, whenever I'm missing you too much."

They were lucky to get out of the building about seventy seconds before Henry got up from his chair, chuckling, and locked the door behind them. Through the glass he watched the young folks walk off, hand in hand, looking very much in love.

* * *

It was like the fall of 2012 all over again.

For a couple of months after returning to Piedmont following Weirdmageddon, Dipper had great trouble sleeping. Almost s soon as he dropped off, horrific nightmares woke him again. His normal anxiety peaked that September, one component being that he missed Mabel, who had a room of her own in their house and wasn't just across the way to comfort him if he woke up sweaty and with heart pounding. As much as they squabbled, it cut him deeply when it felt as if they had been untwinned.

Their family doctor prescribed citalopram, a tranquilizer, in a mild dose. Occasional as-needed doses of it got him through past Halloween when his mood leveled off to just an average Dipper intensity and he no longer needed them. However, being Dipper, he had asked for a refill back before the wedding and the beginning of college. So far he had not needed the little pink ten-mg tablets, but he packed them in his bathroom kit when he was away from home, like off overnight for a track meet. They were in his leather kit with his toothpaste and deodorant right that minute, close to one in the morning.

Next to him in bed, Wendy said, "You're way too tense, man. You need to calm down. You gotta sleep."

He agreed: "Yeah. I'm worried about that device. Even unplugged, even if we persuade Soos not to use it." He nudged Wendy to sit up and then got out of bed. "I'm gonna take one of my tranquilizers."

"Oh, Dipper."

He sighed. "I know, I know, but they do help me sleep. And it's a real light dose. I won't get addicted or anything—I did without them for over five years. It's just that tonight—I'm wound up way too much. I'd just toss and turn and keep you awake, too."

"OK," Wendy said, lying down again beneath the sheet and blanket. "Just tonight, though."

"I'll probably be fine in the morning," Dipper told her. He kissed her cheek and switched on the bedside lamp. The attic bathroom was just outside the bedroom—you had to walk out onto the landing. Dipper tugged on his jeans, because he and Wendy usually slept in the nude, and padded out to the bathroom. Wendy yawned and closed her eyes. She was weirded out, too, not as much as Dipper, but enough so that their touch-telepathy couldn't soothe him.

She murmured, "It'll be all right."

Without knowing exactly why, she had the sense that Dipper had returned and was kneeling on the floor, his face level with her pillow. "What's up?" she murmured, smiling. "Another goodnight kiss?"

She opened her eyes.

The face hat hung there in the lamplight was not Dipper's. It was a hideous face, a wreck of a face, decaying tan skin, flesh, and tendons stretched tight against skull, the mouth a ghastly gape bristling with yellow teeth. The eyes—the eyes!—the eye sockets, rather, hollow, strung with sickening threads of dry tissue, empty, endlessly deep, dark as midnight but with far-away ominous glitters.

A voice dry as dust growled, _Give me your eyes!_

"Wendy! What's wrong?" Dipper rushed in and turned on the overhead light. Wendy, naked, crouched on the bed in the corner of the wall, her green eyes wide and shocked. Dipper said, "I heard something—"

She had not screamed, but she had made noise as she convulsively thrust the thing away from her and had flung herself across the bed. "Man," she said, gasping. "It was—a vision, I guess. But it sure felt solid when I punched it—solid the way an empty hornet's nest is, all fragile and crumbly. It disintegrated to a cloud of dust. It's gone now."

He climbed on the bed and sat next to her, hugging her tight, thinking to her — _Let me see what you saw._

Shivering, Wendy did, recalling every gruesome detail. _That's it. It didn't look like the Witch. Those eye sockets—like looking from light-years away into a dying universe! But it wasn't the Witch. Some other kind of ghost or apparition._

— _Maybe it was—the person that the Witch got its eyes from._

_Dipper? Don't let go of me for a minute, OK?_

— _I've got you, Wen. We have each other._

_Hey, Dip? Want to share one of your pills with me?_

"Sure," he whispered, smoothing her hair. Still—

That was a hell of a thing for a Corduroy to ask for.

* * *


	6. What Is It?

**That Day in May**

_(April-May 2018)_

* * *

**6-What Is It?**

"I think," Stanford Pines said, "Everyone ought to leave this place."

"I better stay," Soos said. "Mr. other Pines put me in charge of the Mystery Shack. I gotta stick with it until it goes down like a ship. Like a ship!"

"Dear," Melody said gently, "you're a father now."

"And a good husband," Ford said. "Let me call Stanley. He'll be glad to let you, Melody, Rosa, and your children stay with him and Sheila. They've got plenty of room. Wendy and Mason can stay with us until we know exactly what's loose in the Shack."

"I'll get the children and Abuelita," Melody said. "We'll be ready in a few minutes."

Ford took out his computer phone—as he still called it. "I'll call Lorena. She'll drive up. If you don't mind a little crowding, she can take you all down to Stanley's house. I'll also call to let him know you're coming. Soos, if you don't mind staying just a little longer, we need to learn more about that machine."

"Sure. I'll tell you all you want to know," Soos said. "I wouldn't ever have bought it if I knew there was, like, a ghost in it!"

"I'm not sure it is a ghost," Ford said.

"What is it, then?" Wendy asked.

"That's what I hope we can determine," Ford said. "But first—let's get the women and children to safety."

Wendy, now recovered from her shock, glanced and Dipper and rolled her eyes at Ford's mention of women and children, and Dipper surreptitiously zipped his lip. She nodded.

By two in the morning, only Ford, Soos, Dipper, and Wendy remained in the Shack. No other spooky stuff, as Stan might put it, had happened. Stanley had wanted to come up the hill, but Ford said, "Please, no. You can keep watch on the Shack. If anything strange happens—if the lights go off in the windows—then you can hurry up as fast as you can. You're our lifeline, Stanley."

"I'll be sitting in the Stanleymobile," Stan said firmly. "Right out in the parking lot. Leave the gift shop door open. Block it so it won't close by accident. I'll wait."

Stanford had opened the Museum door and had used his anomaly detector to scan the room. One dial—marked UNKNOWN THREAT—had pegged out. They locked the door again and, because even the gift shop felt intimidating now, they sat around the dining room table. In front of Wendy lay her special axe, the one she'd inherited from her ancestor Archibald Corduroy.

So other young married ladies bring their favorite tops and shoes when they travel. Wendy packed her axe. Deal with it.

"All right," Stanford said to Soos as Dipper and Wendy sat holding hands and listening, "Tell us about it."

"It all started," Soos said, "when we were away in Mexico. Is that a good way of beginning a flashback or whatever? Does it sound right?"

* * *

Every winter, Abuelita liked to go to Mexico. The cold winters in Oregon hurt her old bones, and she had grandchildren and now even two great-grandchildren down in the old country. Soos and Melody had taken to accompanying her—soon Little Soos would be in school and couldn't go see his cousins every year, and Melody agreed that learning a little Spanish and seeing what life was like in another country were good for the kids.

Anyway, the previous winter Soos had met a fellow American, an old guy named Braun, who was interested to learn that Soos ran the Mystery Shack. "Dude," Soos had told him as they sat on the deck of a chartered fishing boat out of Cabo San Lucas, "the Mystery Shack has like the finest collection of weirdness in the country. In the whole country!"

"I was in that business myself for a long time," Mr. Braun had said. "Braun's Barn of Magic. I ran it on three different boardwalks over the years. I'm retired now, though. I've got a whole warehouse full of curiosities and puzzlements. I really ought to sell the stuff. My wife died two years ago, neither of my sons wants anything to do with the boardwalk racket—they're both college graduates, in business. Would you be interested in checking out my stock? We might be able to come to an agreement."

"Where is the place?" Soos asked.

It was, as Braun explained, in San Diego. Soos thought and said, "That's a little out of my way. But I'd like to see the things you got."

The fishing was good that day. Braun caught a striped marlin, Soos a wahoo, which he threw back, "but it didn't yell 'wahoo,' dawgs." They were in a good mood, and Braun suggested that he send Soos photos of the things in storage.

"So when we got back home, he had like a hundred pictures he'd sent me. Most of the stuff didn't have the right vibe for the Shack. Stuff like a mummy in a case, but it was, like, obviously just a department-store dummy, and the case looked shoddy. And there were lots of pinball machines, but I kinda got creeped out by pinball once. Oh, and a taxidermied giant frog, but it was just, you know, a big frog. But I thought the fortune-telling witch might be a good exhibit. He didn't want hardly anything for it—just fifty bucks, 'cause it had stopped working years ago. But he broke it down and shipped it to me—the shipping cost more than the exhibit did! And I had time to fix it up."

* * *

Soos went into a complex explanation of how he got the machine working again. Ford listened patiently and then asked, "Did the cards come with the witch?"

"Oh, sure, in their own wooden box. I used 'em 'cause they're not like regular card size, you know, and I thought the machine probably couldn't pick up or deal regular cards."

Soos gave Ford Mr. Braun's business card. "How long do I got to stay out of the Shack?" he asked anxiously. "We're supposed to open in two weeks."

"Maybe it won't be too long," Ford said. "Perhaps a good old-fashioned exorcism would do the trick."

"Should I buy like some pea soup?" Soos asked.

"I . . . doubt that will be necessary."

Soos left, and Stan came in. "OK, Sixer, what kinda trouble you got my favorite niece-in-law into now?"

"Hey!" Dipper said. "I'm here, too!"

"Yeah, it's partly your fault for marrying her. You're too good for him, Wendy!"

"Have some coffee," Dipper suggested.

When they all were sitting with cups ranging from black to cream and sugar, Dipper asked Ford, "Why didn't the unicorn-hair barrier keep whatever it is outside?"

"I was wondering that, too," Wendy said. "Do we need some more unicorn hair?"

"The barrier is still intact," Ford said. "I already checked that. However, think about this: Soos brought the machine inside—when it was inert and not working. He repaired it within the protective field. Now I assume the Witch, or whatever force is at work, is trapped inside the containment shield. It's like vampires. I assume you're familiar with vampire lore."

"Only from the movies," Wendy said. "They live forever, the young guys are hunky and sparkle in the sun, and they hate werewolves. What?" she asked because Dipper was staring at her.

"I can't believe you like those movies," he said.

"I don't like 'em! I just watched one with Mabel one night when you came home late. It was dumb. Too good to be like the funny-bad ones, too stupid to be really good."

"Either way," Ford said, "I was referring to the ancient Eastern European tradition that a vampire is incapable of entering a home without being invited."

"I spent years as a traveling salesman," Stan said. "I know how that feels!"

"OK," Dipper said. "So Soos brought it through the protection field, and he could do that because it wasn't functioning. And then he set it up in the Museum and repaired it. Did he try it out?"

"I asked him that," Ford said. "The first thing I said to him, while you two were dressing. He did, just once. He says he can't remember what the cards were, but the recording said, in general terms, 'A new beginning. A move. The past re-awakens. The future is clouded.'"

"Four cards," Dipper said. "So it was a complete reading."

Dipper and Wendy told him about the reading they had witnessed. Ford had seen the second one himself. "Both times," Ford reflected, "the final card was not turned. That may be vital. A complete reading may seal a course, and an interrupted reading—when the last card is not revealed—leaves options open. Let's hope so, anyway."

"Why don't we just take a screwdriver to that cockamamie thing?" Stan asked.

"I got a quicker way," Wendy said, picking up her axe close to the head.

"That might be an extraordinarily bad idea," Ford said. "It could be like, oh—trying to disarm a bomb by clipping a wire, but not knowing which wire would produce an instant explosion if cut. Whatever's going on with that automaton, it has at least a trace of sentience. If we just tried to destroy the machine, we might release or externalize the supernatural force—it might even take over our minds. Or infest every inch of the house."

"Let's not get hasty with that," Stan said. "This place is Soos's livelihood—and you and me got lots invested in it, too, and—I can't believe I'm sayin' this—I'm not talkin' about money, either."

"For the time being," Ford said, "what I propose is this: We won't try to destroy the machine, not yet. However, we will leave it disconnected. And I think we should remove that deck of Tarot cards and lock it in an anti-paranormal container. I have one down in my lab that would be more than ample."

"Let's do it," Wendy said.

"Once done," Ford continued, "I'll research further. I'll call the man who sold it to Soos, Mr. Braun, and see what I can learn of its provenance. And I'm sure that an automaton like this must be mentioned in historical records. I'll get a team of trusted students onto that as soon as it's daylight. For right now—yes, let's go remove the glass and take those cards away."

"Wendy," Stan said, "bring your axe."

Stan grumbled about the dim light in the Museum—though that had been his idea—and brought in a portable emergency light, which gave them better illumination. Ford brought a metal box up from the lab, looking something like a cash box, but with arcane symbols and sigils engraved over its entire surface. It was a dull purplish-brown, and Stanley hefted it experimentally. "Heavy. What's it made of?"

"Pure silver," Ford said. "It's badly tarnished, but I was away for thirty years and no one took care to polish it."

"Hey, no fair! I didn't even know it was here!" Stan said. "You probably had it locked up in one of those cabinets downstairs. I wasn't interested in them, just in fixing that Portal."

Ford had set the box on the floor and was busy unscrewing the front glass panel from the cabinet. "Just as well you didn't discover it. Even melted down it would be worth a lot of money."

"Oh, so now I'm a thief, am I?"

"Guys, guys!" Dipper said. "I think the Witch may be messing with your minds!"

"What?" Stan demanded. "Makin' Sixer say I'd steal his stupid box?"

"Making you guys fight with each other," Wendy said. "Come on—cool it. Think what we're trying to do."

"We're trying to save Soos and his family," Dipper added. "And maybe the Mystery Shack, too. Truce, OK?"

"Yeah, well, maybe I'm grumpy when people wake me up between two and three in the morning. Here, Ford, let me help with that."

The two men carefully removed the sheet of glass and leaned it against the wall.

Stan pointed to the oversized deck of cards and asked, "These the doohickeys?"

"Don't touch them!" Ford warned, and Stan jerked his hand back. "First let me perform an incantation against harm." He stepped back a few feet, waved all twelve fingers at the Witch, and solemnly chanted,

" _Pmllhp xka jxdfzfxkp xka bsbovqefkd bsfi,_

_vlro mltbo fp rpbibpp xka tbxh xp x tbbsfi!_

_Yv qeb mltbop lc dlla, f loabo vlr lrq!_

_fq'p kl rpb ql obpfpq, ql pzobxj lo ql pelrq!_

_Qeb mltbo lc dlla zljmbip vlr, pl dl-_

_lkb, qtl, qeobb, ibq'p pqxoq qeb pelt!"_

Nothing happened when he finished. Stan said drily, "That was impressive, Sixer! That wasn't Spanish. Was it the language of No-Vowelland?"

"It's an encoded arcane and solemn litany of great protective power," Ford said. "Everyone, please, stand back. I'm going to remove the cards."

He reached into the cabinet.

The machine was still unplugged.

But Ford yelled in alarm as the mechanical hands of the Witch seized his wrist and wrenched it so hard that Dipper heard his bones creaking.

* * *


	7. So Typical

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: I woke this morning with a cold. Nothing really serious, no fever or loss of smell. I still smell the same as I always do. But I was draggy and wrote the chapter on a tablet, which is not my best way of writing, and I've noticed a plethora of typos and inelegantly expressed ideas. So this is the chapter revised on my laptop, kindly brought to my bedside by my wife, who says it's the best way to keep me out of her hair. Sorry for the mistakes, and this note will self-destruct with the next update.

**That Day in May**

_(April-May 2018)_

* * *

**7-So Typical**

At forty minutes past three in the morning in Gravity Falls, Dipper, Wendy, Ford, and Stan struggled in the Museum with something they couldn't see or hear—or understand. At that same moment in Georgia, forty minutes past six in the Eastern time zone, Mabel and Teek woke up cuddled together. Cuddling soon led to kissing and caressing. That led to what it usually does for two young people in love with each other.

After a shower, Mabel stretched. "I feel so relaxed! Could we see my movie again?"

"Get dressed or we'll be all off schedule," Teek told her. "If you hurry, we've got time to see it before breakfast."

Mabel could get dressed almost as fast as she could get undressed. Teek was still in jeans and undershirt when, in a fresh powder-blue sweater and a pair of tight jeans she said, "Start the show! Start the show! Start the show!"

"OK, OK," Teek said. He turned on his laptop and logged on, and then he plugged in the USB memory stick, opened a video program and played the recording.

"Ooh, you made me look so _good_! Mabel squealed as her image, sitting on the foot of what looked like a real bed in a real dormitory room, dressed in a cute pink sweater and jeans. "Shh, shh, I'm gonna sing!"

The first few bars of the song came out clear in Mabel's soprano: "I'm kinda pretty, and pretty damn smart—"

Mabel laughed out loud when Kate's exasperated and off-color expletive came out of her mouth. "I see why this made the audience laugh!"

"You photograph well," Teek said when the song ended. "When I get back home this summer, let's work on a movie together. A shorat one, you know—you'll be the star, I'll be the everything else."

"Deal!" Mabel said. "Oh, and I'll have to dig up the recordings that Dip and I made those first few years. He did 'Dipper's Guide to the Unexplained,' and I did 'Mabel's Guide to Life.' I want you to see them! They were just amateur movies, though. But we were so cute! And now I'm a lot cuter! And hungry! Why aren't we going to breakfast?"

Teek took her to a little family-run place, a student hangout not far off the GCAF campus, called "Mama Lee's."

"It looks like a gas station!" Mabel said.

"Used to be," Teek told her. "But for forty years it's been Mama Lee's restaurant." He held the door for her. They walked into what once had been the filling-station office, and a waitress led them into what used to be the repair bay—it now was the dining room, and it was crowded, but their luck was in, because the waitress found them a table for two just beside the door into the kitchen area. As they settled in, Teek said, "I like this place because it reminds me so much of the snack bar in the Mystery Shack."

"It's about the same size," Mabel said. "Everything smells so good! What should I order?"

"The menu changes almost every morning," Teek said. "They'll bring us a photocopied menu just for this morning."

And sure enough, the waitress did return with a silvery coffee carafe and the menus. The waitress said, "My name's Lou Anne. It's not on the menu, but we also have honey-baked ham this morning if y'all want to swap that for any of the meats."

After bouncing back and forth between three different options, when Lou Anne returned for their order, Mabel jumped to a fourth selection instead: "This Hawaiian banana-nut bread sounds yummy! And I'd like two eggs, over medium, and, um, let me see, the turkey sausage and a melon cup! Is that good?"

"It's yummy, hon," Lou Anne said, smiling. "Just like you said."

Teek asked for two eggs, the honey-baked ham, fresh buttermilk biscuits, and grits. When the food came, Mabel asked, "Can I have just a taste of your grits?"

"Help yourself," Teek said.

A few minutes later when Lou Anne stopped by to freshen their coffee, Teek asked, "May I have another order of grits, please?"

Mabel said, "Sorry! I was trying to decide if I like them or not. I'm still not sure, and I ate it all!"

"Um," Teek said, "Make that _two_ extra orders of grits, please."

Mabel raved about the Hawaiian nut bread—"It's got coconut in it! And bananas and little pineapple chunks! I have to get this recipe."

She had made the second full order of grits disappear, too. Teek, carefully guarding his own serving, said, "I'll send you back home with a bag of grits, too."

"I'll make everybody learn to love them!" Mabel said.

Like the Mystery Shack, Mama Lee's asked the patrons to pay not at the table, but up front at the register. When he did pay, Teek asked, "Do you have any of the cookbooks today?"

The middle-aged lady at the cash register smiled. "Sure enough, hon." She stooped down and rose with a spiral-bound book. It had her picture on the cover, posing behind a table with all kinds of goodies on it, and the title _Mama Lee's Restaurant Cookbook_.

Teek paid an extra fifteen dollars for it and handed it to Mabel. "My fiancée is going to learn Southern cooking," he explained to the woman.

"Sugar, you learn how to do that, your man will love you forever!" the woman said with a chuckle.

"Then I'm gonna learn it!" Mabel said. "Are you Mama Lee?"

"I am now," the woman said. "My grandmama, Ruthie Lee Johnson, started this restaurant. Then my mama, Jamaica Lee Adams, ran it for twenty years. Now she's retired, and I'm Mrs. Gracie Lee Satterfield. All different last married names, but my daughter, Joy Lee Satterfield until she finds someone to marry, is also gonna be Mama Lee one day, good Lord willing."

In their borrowed car, Mabel started leafing through the cookbook as Teek drove north toward the city, about fifteen heavy-traffic miles away. "Did you like the biscuits? Here's a recipe for their buttermilk biscuits. Ooh, the Hawaiian bread! I'm gonna make that for breakfast when I go back home, first morning. I'll have to call and get Dip to buy some groceries for it. Huh, recipe for red-eye gravy. I wonder what that is. It has coffee in it! Sounds yucky, but I'll try it! Where are we driving?"

"First I thought we'd stop at the Atlanta zoo. Early in the morning a lot of the animals are active—"

"Who you been taking to the zoo, hmm? Not your Bollywood star?"

"No, last term I was with a team that shot a part of a film there!" Teek said. "I didn't know you were so jealous."

"I'm not jealous, just protective," Mabel said. "OK, so you've been there. Wait, just you, a camera and a girl, or—"

"A team, not just two. Fifteen of us in a group," Teek said. "Are you just ragging on me now?"

"Yeah, little bit," Mabel said, giving him a wicked little grin. "So what do they have at the zoo?"

"I think you'll like the pandas," Teek said.

Mabel squee'd.

"And then around ten we'll drive up to Eighteenth and Spring Street to the Atlanta Center for Puppetry Arts, and I'll introduce you to a real celebrity."

"Who? Who?"

"Well, the Center has the Jim Henson Museum attached. We can see a puppet show, and then afterward in the museum I can introduce you to the real Kermit the Frog."

"Woohoo!"

"And they also have an original Big Bird."

Mabel clenched her fists, waved them beside her head, and this time her squee was twice as loud.

* * *

Dipper would not let go.

"I can kill it!" Wendy insisted, twisting, wildly trying to wrest the axe away from Dipper. She was a strong girl, and Dipper had to struggle to hold on and stay on his feet.

"Let's just get the kids out and I can bust it to pieces!" Stan yelled, brandishing his big fists.

Ford bent over, nursing his injured wrist. Behind him, the Tarot Witch had . . . regenerated the arm that Wendy had chopped through. The scattered, shattered chunks of metal and leather were not reassembling, but what was replacing the machinery were an arm and hand that looked much more like a human's. Well . . . a dead human's—yellowing bone, mildew-spotted dried flesh. And the bony fingers were moving, trying but not formed well enough yet to sweep up the deck of cards that Ford had not managed to seize.

Dipper was afraid to loosen his grip on the axe handle—he couldn't help thinking that if Wendy swung on the Witch again, something terrible would happen to her. "Please," he begged. "Trust me, Wendy. I love you!"

She grunted as she tried to yank the axe from him again. Dipper risked it—he let go with his left hand and moved it to her hand, further down the haft. Closing his hand on the back of hers, he sent her every bit of love that he could, pled with her to – _please, let's get Stan and Ford out of here._

He nearly staggered at the blast of fury coming from her—not directed at him, just the hot desire to strike back, to destroy the thing that wanted to take her eyes. And he felt the surge of willpower she mustered to gasp out, "OK, I'm OK, get 'em out!"

Dipper yelled, "Stan! Push Ford out of this room, quick!"

Stanford was cursing, uncharacteristically. Stan shoved and dragged him. Dipper got Wendy through the Museum door, held it open until Stan and Ford practically fell through, then slammed and locked it. "Let's get out of the Shack," he said.

They raced through the gift shop, but a few steps away from the porch, the air seemed to solidify in front of them.

"We can't get through the barrier!" Dipper said. "Grunkle Ford—are you all right?"

Ford, breathing hard, sat on the edge of the porch and held up his right arm, clenching and unclenching his fist. "I—I don't think she broke any bones—but that was incredibly painful! We need to consult on how best to approach the riddle of the automaton's origin and discover possible weak points—"

"Nah, nah, what we need is to let me and Wendy go in with brass knucks and her axe!" Stan said in an angry rush. "Bust it to pieces, and that'll show its weakness!"

"Yeah!" Wendy said. "Let me and Stan take this. We can chop it to splinters—"

"Wait, wait, you're scaring me," Dipper said.

"You're always scared!" Stan snarled.

"Don't yell at him!" Wendy said. "He can't help it!"

Dipper got up on the porch and stood with his back against the door. "OK!" he shouted. "Yeah, I'm scared! Scared that I'll lose Wendy and you guys! Think! This is stuff the Witch is doing to us—see?"

"I'll see better after I chop its head off!" Wendy said.

"Step back," Dipper pleaded. "The Witch is, I don't know—messing with us! Making us more _us_ than we are! It's making Grunkle Ford want to stop and reason everything out so the Witch has more time! I saw its arm regenerating, so punching it or whacking it with an axe isn't going to destroy it. It's not even plugged in, but it moved! It, it—" Dipper took a deep breath. "This isn't fear," he muttered, his teeth clenched. "It's not my feeling, it's the Witch making me feel this, I can fight it down—"

He'd squeezed his eyes closed, but he felt a cool palm on the back of his neck. – _I got your back, Dip. Don't be scared. We can do this_.

_Don't let it work on your anger, Wendy._

— _Hard to fight. It scared me so bad, wanting my eyes!_

_You—you take my fear. I'll take your anger._

— _Let's try it, dude._

It felt like standing right in the middle of a violent, silent explosion. Dipper felt a horrible kind of pressure building up inside and for a moment he went rigid, clenching his fists, shaking, wanting to rush back to the evil machine, to break it into fragments, even though he knew that would, in the end, not work.

And Wendy, for the first time since she was a tiny child, felt true fear, a shrieking horror of the Witch, the Museum, the whole Shack—she went all the way back to being about six years old, when her dad came home from the hospital where her sick mother lay one terrible day, and Manley Dan fell to his knees, weeping, and that scared her more than anything before or since, because in that instant she knew her mom was never coming back—

Dipper and Wendy hugged each other, fighting their way out of the confusion and the disorientation.

When Dipper came fully back to himself, they were kneeling, facing each other, hugging, holding each other up.

"You two gonna make out, or what?" Stan asked harshly. "That machine's still inside there—"

"Gotta try it," Dipper said to Wendy. "Stan, Ford, don't do anything. Just watch us and wait."

Hand in hand, Wendy and Dipper walked all the way to the parking lot.

"Let's go," Ford said.

But the invisible barrier stopped him and Stanley cold.

"We gotta go back," Wendy said.

Ford held up a hand. "Don't re-enter the shield! You might be able to research the origin of the Tarot deck and the Witch—"

Dipper and Wendy came back to the porch. "That would take too long," Dipper said. "I don't think we've got enough time."

"What exactly happened?" Stan said. "I mean, none of us could leave, and then you could—"

Ford said shakily, "I have a hypothesis."


	8. Supposes

**That Day in May**

_(April-May 2018)_

* * *

**8-Supposes**

"Agh!" Wendy grunted, holding a hand to her forehead. "It's gettin' in my head again! I want so bad to run in there and start chopping at it!"

Stan looked purple with fury. "Me, too! You and me, we could—"

"No!" Dipper insisted. "It takes whatever in us would help it and makes that stronger! My uncertainty, Wendy's skill with an axe, Grunkle Stan, your anger, Grunkle Ford, your ability to reason!"

Stanford, absolutely pale beside his brother, nodded. "That . . . forgive me, I'm struggling to make this non-theoretical—"

"Yeah," Stan said. "Algebra won't help us now!"

"All right. If Mason is correct—and indications are that—sorry, too wordy. I think Mason's right. I think when the Witch, ah, stimulates our various propensities, the barrier identifies them as something that should be contained. That's why we couldn't get through at first."

"Wendy and I can get out," Dipper said. "When we work together. But we have to share our feelings—my caution sort of damps down her, uh—"

"Axe-craziness," she said. "No shame in that!"

"Right, and her courage counteracts my timidity, so we're close enough to normal to get through the barrier. Um. I don't know how you two can even each other out."

"Perhaps through an act of will," Ford said. "If we tried leaving together—"

"Oh, great. What, you want to climb on my shoulders, Poindexter?"

"Let's first try arm in arm."

With Stanley growling and grumbling, they linked arms and rushed down the steps and toward the parking lot, only to hit the invisible barrier and be knocked back on their butts. Stan got up, fuming. "Any more brilliant ideas, Einstein? Maybe saw off the tops of our skulls and switch brain parts?"

"I doubt we have time for that," Ford said as Stan gave him a hand up. "The best thing is for Mason and Wendy to escape and this time stay out, and if you and I can just hang on without succumbing to our natural propensities regarding cognition or pugnaciousness—"

"I oughta punch _you_ out!" Stan said. He rubbed his eyes and in a rueful voice added, "I didn't mean that—your six-dollar words are just—just—"

Wendy said, "Dr. P! Do you have your, like, quantum pistol?"

"Yes," Ford said, drawing the weapon from beneath his coat. "No, wait, that's the magnet gun. The destabilizer's in my right-side holster."

"Set it to stun!" Wendy said.

"Simplicity itself," Ford said. "Fiddleford discovered that routing the charge through reductive quartz of a gradated thickness can attenuate—"

"Give it to me, please," Dipper asked meekly.

Ford handed it over. "I fail to comprehend—" he said.

Dipper turned the dial. "I'm so sorry!" he said before blasting Ford, who crumpled in a heap.

"Ha!" Stan said. "That's one way of shuttin' him up! OK, let's go get that witch!"

"Sorry, Grunkle Stan!" Dipper said before shooting Stanley, too. "Wendy—let's do that sharing again. Then if they're not conscious, maybe we can drag them through!"

They did it. Emotionally draining as it was, they opened up to each other. They pulled Ford first, and, glory be, they got him out on the grass. When they grabbed Stan's arms and pulled him—like hauling a heavily laden sled over gravel—the barrier slowed them, as if they were trying to struggle through a thick liquid, but they made it through and then collapsed next to the two inert Pines twins.

"Dipper," Wendy said, "I hate that. I mean—I know you must be afraid of me when I lose control like I did. And exchanging our feelings—I can be pretty horrible."

"Not to me," Dipper told her. "I just worry about being too pathetic."

"We're both kinda busted, aren't we?" she asked, sounding as if she were on the verge of tears.

"Not when we're together," he said. He kissed her. _There. Now we're back to normal._

— _For us. I love you, Dip._

_Love you, too. Let's see if we can wake these guys up and get down to Ford's house. We have to find a way of fighting this thing._

They shook Ford and Stan, slapped them—lightly, but more than pats—and finally they both began to groan and flutter their eyelids. At last Ford, with Dipper's assistance, sat up, both hands at his temples. "I've never tried that before. It's a fairly painful experience."

A moment later, Stan also managed to push himself up. "My mouth tastes like a cat's been sleeping in it, and she ain't housebroken. Also, I want to thank you so much. I never had a hangover in my life, and now I know what one feels like."

"We got you out of the unicorn-hair barrier," Wendy said. "C'mon. You're both wet with dew."

"Oh, is that dew?" Stan asked. "That's a relief!"

"Let's go to Grunkle Ford's," Dipper said. "I can drive."

"Nah, we'll go in my car," Stan said, taking a wobbly step. "If the Shack blows up, I don't want to lose the Stanleymobile." He leaned heavily on Dipper's shoulder. "But I'm in no condition to drive, even just down the hill. Pile me and my brother in the back seat." He fumbled in his pocket. "Here. I trust you to drive."

"Thanks," Dipper said.

But Stan tossed the keys past him, to Wendy, who was helping Ford. "Thanks, man. I'll try not to hit any pedestrians."

Ford, obviously still a bit woozy, said, "The time must be around four in the morning. It's unlikely that anyone would be out for a stroll at this time of day."

"I'll be careful, anyhow," Wendy promised.

Though thanks to each having taken a nip from the Fountain of Youth, Stan and Ford were both fiftyish, getting them into the back seat of the Stanleymobile was like helping a couple of nonagenarian outfielders into the van for their ride to the Old Timers' Game. Wendy drove past Stan's driveway and down to Ford's. Lorena must have been waiting up, because, wrapped in a quilted robe, she came out to help Wendy and Dipper get the boys in. They helped Stan pull off his shoes, and he sacked out on the living-room couch.

Ford said, "I think we need about half an hour to recover. Dear, let Wendy and Dipper use the guest room."

"Of course," Lorena said.

They knew where it was, but she escorted them there. "If you need to shower, there are fresh towels in the linen closet," she said.

"I think we just need to rest for a few minutes," Wendy said. "It's reaction, I guess. I don't know about Dip, but I keep getting short fits of the shakes."

"Same here," Dipper said. "If we could lie down—like Grunkle Ford said, for just half an hour—"

"Of course," Lorena said. "I'm going to put on a pot of herbal tea."

"Peppermint," Wendy murmured. "If you have it."

"I'm pretty sure we do." Lorena softly closed the door.

Dipper and Wendy kicked off their shoes without unlacing them and collapsed, hugging each other. _Dip! We're OK now. Are you crying?_

— _A little._

_I got you now. We're safe. Calm down._

— _No, it's not that. I think—it's like you said, just reaction. And what Grunkle Ford said._

_What was that?_

Aloud, sounding like an awestruck kid, he told her, "Dipper. He didn't call me Mason, but Dipper."

Wendy felt what he was feeling. "Yeah, he loves you, Dipper. And you know Stan does, or he wouldn't tease you. You're family."

"So are you," Dipper said. "Wendy—you're the bravest person I know."

"Yeah, yeah," she said mildly. "You're the guy who's scared out of his wits and still stands up to the danger. That's bravery, Dip. That's courage. And your smarts keep me balanced."

They embraced silently, and then Dipper chuckled. "Man," he said. "If I put this stuff in one of my books, the readers would be throwing up!"

Huh. Just shows how much you know, kid. Oh, I forgot, the narrator doesn't get any lines. So forget that. Let's go to a puppet show.

* * *

Mabel had spent about half the money she had bought to last out the week on items from the Puppetry Arts Center gift shop—trinkets and toys and puppet on puppet. Oh, not the _Avenue Q_ brand of hot puppet on puppet action, just some irresistibly cute lambs and a dwarf that she could easily repurpose to be a Gnome with just a change of outfit and a beard, and some Muppet figurines, and a whole batch of puffy puppet stickers—

It was so much of a load that she and Teek stored the swag in the trunk of his borrowed car before going back inside. The Henson museum was great, and Mabel marveled at seeing the actual puppets that had brought so many of Jim Henson's fantasies to life, but wait, there was more—a separate museum of world puppetry, everything from Renaissance marionettes to Indonesian shadow puppets, from a Lamb Chop (Mabel started humming "The Song that Never Ends") to an actual Norwegian Troll who had spent his life on stage menacing the three Billy Goats Gruff, and tons more.

"I feel like a kid in a toy store," Mabel said. There was even a puppet stage where you could manipulate a hand-and-rod puppet and then see your performance on a monitor. And toward the end, in a glass case stood rod-and-hand puppets that had appeared in the original Broadway run of _Avenue Q._ A helpful docent came over and said, "These look like Muppets, but they're actually from a puppet show for adults."

"I know!" Mabel said. "I played Kate Monster in our college's fall production!"

"Really?" the lady asked, visibly delighted.

Mabel quoted a line: "I have to grade term papers, but my students are in kindergarten, so they're really short."

"I wonder if Jillian is here," the docent said. "She played Kate and Lucy on Broadway a few times—she was an understudy."

They checked, but alas, Jillian was off that day. But Mabel left her a note.

She and Teek got tickets for _Pete the Cat,_ the mainstage production. They weren't the only adults in the audience, either, and at the end the puppeteers came out on stage and talked about the production, the story, the book from which it was adapted, and how the puppets worked.

"That was so much fun!" Mabel said when they went back to the car. "It looked so professional!"

"Well," Teek said reasonably, "it is a professional theater. It's noon. Want some lunch?"

"What did you have in mind?"

"Tired of Southern cooking?"

She gave him an oh-come-on sort of look. "Bring it on! What do you have in mind?"

He had in mind another non-chain restaurant, a place near the state Capitol building—"The roof is real gold," he said.

Mabel stared at the gleaming dome. "Really? Must weigh a ton!"

"Not as much as you'd think. They told me it's only one-five thousandth of an inch thick."

"Huh. Shatter my illusions. Well, mental note: Never let Grunkle Stan lay eyes on it, or he'll find some way to swindle them out of the roof."

He took Mabel to a barbecue place where local politicians and business leaders often had lunch. She passed on the specialty of the house, ribs—she didn't exactly keep kosher, and she wasn't averse to the occasional bacon strip or two, but out of loyalty to Waddles, she had pretty much given up most pork products when she was twelve—and instead had a very tasty brisket sandwich.

From there they cut back north and toured the High Museum of Art, a delight to any self-respecting art student like Mabel. She got the brochures and wondered aloud how she could work any of this experience into her art classes when she got back to California. She'd find a way.

They planned the next day. At the moment, two big movies were filming in Atlanta studios, and Teek had wangled an outdoor set visit to one of them, a superhero flick in which an old-fashioned street in an Atlanta suburb was going to represent the midwestern hometown of an adolescent who would one day grow up to be Magnificent Man.

"We'll have to pay attention and stay behind the ropes and be really quiet," Teek cautioned Mabel. "And it'll probably be real dull—they shoot scenes five or six times at a minimum, and they spend a couple of hours just setting up the camera and lights before each shot. But we might glimpse one or two of the stars. Ken Craig's playing the teen-aged Johnny Fox, and Alanna Evert is his mom. I don't know which scene this is, but our professor had a copy of the script, and I've got photocopies of the three scenes that will probably include the one they're shooting tomorrow. Of course, if the weather's bad, they'll do some indoor shooting instead, and then we're out of luck."

"I'll keep my fingers crossed," Mabel said. By then it was getting on toward three in the afternoon. On the way back to her motel, Teek stopped for gas, checked the oil—a little bit low, so he bought a quart in case he needed to add any in the next couple of days—and they found a park where they could just relax in the sun—warm day, high in the upper seventies—and talk about their schools and their families and their futures and in between, just smooch a lot.

* * *

Soos felt bad about imposing on Stan and Sheila, though the older couple didn't mind at all, and finally, when Stanley assured them that one way or the other, they were gonna clean out that mess in the Shack in the next couple days, Melody came up with a solution.

The Ramirezes would go to Portland until Friday, where they could visit family. Abuelita could even spend some time with Soos's cousin Reggie and his wife and their baby girl.

"Well," Soos said reluctantly, "I guess the Shack's in good enough shape to open up on the sixteenth."

"If it ain't," Stan reassured him, "we'll all pitch in and give it a good spit and polish as soon as we get that machine out of the place."

Soos lowered his eyes. "I messed up," he muttered.

"There was no way of telling something was awry," Ford reassured him. "Whatever evil force is there didn't even show up when I first checked. I'm beginning to speculate that it actually resides in, or channels itself through, the cards."

"Hey," Stan said to Soos. "Cheer up. You can fix it up. We'll get a department-store mannequin cheap, get Mabel to do a real repulsive make-up job on her, pose her with a regular old spooky-card deck, and bada-bing! That will be your new witch exhibit. And we won't put any moving parts in it, either!"

"Or use those cards," Ford added.

"Yeah," Soos said. "Too bad. Mr. Braun told me those were real antique cards. The deck used to belong to some magiciany, wizardy dude back in the real old days. I can't remember the name. It wasn't Merlin or Dumbledore or Gandalf, though."

If Ford had been a bird dog, he would have pointed. "Is there any way of finding out?"

"Oh, sure," Soos said. "I can call him."

With Ford on the extension, Soos found the card with Braun's address and telephone number. He dialed it, and on the fifth ring a man answered with a clipped, "Hello?"

"Hi, Mr. Braun?" Soos said. "This is me, Soos Ramirez, remember from the fishing boat? I have a question."

"This isn't Braun," the man said. "This is Lieutenant Alvarez, Homicide."

"Huh?" Soos said.

"Somebody murdered Mr. Braun," the man said. "Last night. Now I have a few questions for _you_."

* * *


	9. Naturally, Maybe

**That Day in May**

_(April-May 2018)_

* * *

**9-Naturally, Maybe**

At his earliest opportunity, Grunkle Ford called Fiddleford McGucket and had him cover the two classes at the Institute that Ford was teaching. Then they all waited to hear news from San Diego.

They didn't get the report until 11:00 that Tuesday morning. By then, a worried Soos had taken his family off to Portland. Soos really had no occasion for anxiety. When the police down in San Diego learned that Soos had only had a business deal with Mr. Braun and that he'd been a thousand miles away all the previous day and night, Lieutenant Alvarez had peppered him with a few brusque questions and had taken his contact information, and that was that.

Ford assured Soos that he had no legal problem to be concerned about. "You have an unbreakable alibi. Visit Melody's and your family members in Portland and take your mind off all this. We'll keep you informed of any developments here."

"Yeah," Stan added. "And we'll make sure the Shack is safe by the time you get back."

And even before the Ramirezes had left, Ford was on the phone to the Agency office nearest San Diego. That happened to be the Los Angeles station, located not in Los Angeles, but in San Clemente, for political reasons—too many reasons, too much history, to get into, and none of it matters much, so skip it.

Anyway, the GIB station was only fifty-odd miles north of San Diego. Just phoning it was a complex operation without the super-security available in Ford's lab. He had to call a cut-out number, which gave him a full minute of "We're sorry. This number is no longer in service." Then an AI program asked him for a series of verification codes, and finally, his connection switched to a secure line. A minute after that, he was speaking to Agent Geoffrey Trigger, who had been promoted to head the LA station.

"Sir, yes sir!" Trigger snapped as soon as he heard Ford's caution that he had an urgent mission for him.

Now, first some background on the station. Oh, sure, admit it, you're interested. You wouldn't skip these two paragraphs, now, would you? Please yourself. OK, most of the Agency regional stations were deceptively small, and the LA one was no exception: Trigger, plus a second-in-command, plus a secretarial staff of two, plus four field agents, and that was it. The thing about the Agency, it was highly mobile. If Trigger needed a major deployment of personnel, they could arrive within an hour.

The bare-bones approach meant that station offices were inconspicuous, out of the way, and always bore signage identifying them as something semi-official and not at all in any way involved in supernatural, paranormal, or bizzaro developments. The San Clemente office occupied a plain-looking, rather shabby cinder-block six-room building (eight if we include men's and women's toilets) the size of a small bungalow. The basement, now, that was a different story, covering five thousand square feet. But on the surface anyone passing the small square building would see it and its parking lot surrounded by a twelve-foot-tall chain-link fence topped by coils of razor wire. The sign identified it as US TESTING CENTER FOR COMMUNICABLE COLOSPIROFORMNIA. BIOHAZARD! They never got any drop-ins.

OK, if you skipped those remarkably interesting paragraphs, here's where we start again: Ford winced a little at Trigger's usual paramilitary response. However, though the man had a long and inflexible stick shoved up his—well, never mind. We'll say though Trigger could be humorless and curt, he did have a high level of dedication to the job. Ford quickly told Trigger what he wanted, Trigger immediately repeated the requirements verbatim, and while they waited for action, Ford and Dipper did some online research that left them a bit more knowledgeable about Tarot cards and no wiser about the Witch.

A little after eleven, Trigger, now on site in San Diego (he'd gone there by chopper), phoned in a preliminary report. The Agency had established covers for working with local law-enforcement departments, often a necessity when a UFO landed in someone's back yard or a Bigfoot broke into someone's pantry to steal cans of beans and screwdrivers. The San Diego police already knew Trigger as a Special Agent. In fact, Lieutenant Alvarez and his team had worked with Trigger before, and if they assumed he was FBI, that was on them.

Oh, sure, they could check with the Bureau, and the Bureau would in turn check their computers and say, "He's OK. Work with him." True, the FBI wouldn't really be able to find him if they looked, but the computer cleared him and that was what mattered. If he'd happened to have been sent abroad, let's say to Australia, where there was, oh, we'll call it a bunyip infestation and the Australian authorities checked back with the States, they'd call someone at the CIA, who'd do the same thing as the FBI: "He's one of our top men. Top. Men."

In fact, the Guys in Black were far more secretive and secretly more powerful than either of those agencies. Surprisingly, in the entire Federal government, there was only one man who wielded more power than the Agency.

No, not him. It was the Commissioner of Federal Holidays, a position so clandestine that no one in or out of government has ever heard of it. Thankfully, the Commissioner had been appointed back in the Reagan era and still occupied the office. He was a hundred and seven, and as long as everybody left him alone, he left others alone, content with the private knowledge that he could do almost anything with impunity. His salary and benefits were so comfortable that he never actually did anything at all. Because he was aware that one day he would die, the Commissioner had already picked out his successor. The only thing his replacement would have to do was legally change his name—

How'd I get off on that? Somebody stop me. Federal bureaucracies are a maze.

Anyway, Trigger had worked with Alvarez and the San Diego police before, and they willingly shared what they had. In the course of an hour and a half Trigger dug into the case and then placed a highly secured call to Ford to report.

Say what you want about Geoffrey Trigger, he was thorough and focused and discreet. When he first showed up at the crime scene, he managed to imply that the death of a retired former amusement entrepreneur might possibly have ties to a federal case that he couldn't detail. The cops knew that in the past five years Trigger had cleared up three cases and had given the locals all the credit. As a result, Trigger got free access to what they had, and the officers were willing to tell him what they thought, which had changed since Soos's early-morning call.

"It's not, repeat, it is not, a homicide investigation," Trigger told Ford. "The medical examiner is positive that Braun died of a heart attack possibly brought on by sleep apnea. Braun's apartment is in an assisted-living complex. The downstairs neighbors heard some thuds and crashes and called the night desk. A security officer knocked on the door, got no answer, and unlocked to find Braun sprawled on the floor of his bedroom. She ascertained that Braun was dead, called 911, and the police arrived just before the EMTs, who confirmed the death."

"What's your read of the scene?" Ford asked.

"In view of the preliminary medical report, I agree with the police. Braun evidently got out of bed, fell, and thrashed around, maybe trying to reach the phone. The disorder of the scene caused the first responders to think there had been a struggle. However, the police found no physical evidence of any intrusion."

"Thank you, Agent Trigger," Ford said.

"There's more, sir," Trigger said. "I'm holding a piece of evidence that I'll have to slip into the case file before I depart the city, so I'll send you a copy of that and some documentation. This case may be one of ours."

Ford sighed. "I was afraid of that."

* * *

All that morning, Ford had been pacing, head down, shoulders slouched. At one point, he stopped and asked Lorena, "Have I had breakfast?"

"Only coffee," she said. "What would you like?"

"I'll get an orange."

That was his go-to breakfast. He had missed oranges while he was off in strange dimensions, and since his return, he often had only a single orange, eaten whole, for breakfast. In his state of worry, he immediately forgot to get one from the fridge, but Lorena brought him one on a small plate, peeled, sectioned, and seeded. When she handed it to him, he blinked at it. "What's this?"

"Breakfast," she reminded him gently.

"My favorite." He kissed her cheek, resumed his pacing, and somehow remembered actually to eat the orange.

Sheila, in casual slacks and a gray sweater, had come down the hill to help out, but really there was nothing to do. She and Lorena had tea and chatted in the living room while a grumpy, unshaven Stan sat at the dining-room table playing blackjack against himself and grumbling because he was losing.

Wendy and Dipper sat in on a couple of hands, and Stan won those—an ace and a ten to Wendy's pair of nines and Dipper's Jack and King, for example. They weren't cheating, nor was Stan. "Your luck's holding," Wendy said cheerfully.

"Yeah, maybe I can play that Witch for the Shack," he growled.

In the early afternoon Lorena and Sheila insisted that everyone at least have sandwiches for lunch. While they were eating, Trigger's secured transmission came in. Ford heard the special tone his phone made when something ultra-secret was received, and he jumped up from his half-finished sandwich. "I'll go print that out—"

"Sit still and eat," Lorena said. "I've finished. I'll go do it."

"I really ought to go back to the Shack," Ford said. He looked stressed—he had as heavy a five o'clock shadow as Stan, and his eyes were baggy from weariness. "Just a few focused readings would tell me if the Witch's powers were intensifying. Perhaps I could tie a lifeline around my waist—"

"We'd have to knock you out again," Dipper said. "That can't be good for you."

"Let Dipper and me do it," Wendy said. "We can get through the weirdness barrier, long as we hold hands."

"Well—" Ford said reluctantly.

Lorena came in with a sheaf of computer print-out. "It's nearly fifty pages," she said, handing it to Ford. "And no, I didn't read any of it except for the cover."

Dipper could see what was on that page:

* * *

**CLASSIFIED INFORMATION**

**SECURITY LEVEL A-10**

**WARNING: UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS TO THIS**

**DOCUMENT IS PUNISHABLE BY FIVE YEARS IMPRISONMENT**

**IN A FEDERAL PENITENTIARY!**

**LEVEL 5 OR HIGHER AUTHORIZATION REQUIRED.**

**CLASSIFIED, LEVEL A-10**

* * *

"I have some reading to do," Ford said. "Wendy, Mason, if the two of you are willing and promise me to take every precaution, I'll let you go into the house to scan the premises. Confine yourself to the gift shop. Don't, under any circumstances, enter the Museum. Don't even unlock or open the door to the Museum! Stand at a distance of five feet from the locked door and scan that. Oh, and each of you take a quantum destabilizer pistol."

"Will that even help?" Dipper asked.

With a frustrated expression, Ford said, "I have no idea, but knowing you're armed will make me feel easier in my mind."

"Let's suit up, Dip," Wendy said. "I want to kick that Witch's mechanical butt so we can sleep in the attic tonight!"

"Stanley!" Ford called.

"I'm right here, Poindexter," Stan said from the doorway, taking a long last sip from his coffee cup. "What?"

"I'm asking Mason and Wendy to—"

Stan rolled his eyes. "I heard."

Ford nodded. "Sorry. Please help. I'd like you to go with them, park in the lot, and keep an eye on the Shack. I'll equip them with Agency earpieces and give you one. If they get in trouble, they'll call for help. You—wait for me. Don't go rushing in yourself."

"Gimme one of your destabilizer rifles, then," Stan said. "I'll get 'em out somehow—even if I have to blow up the Shack to do it."

"Swear to me that you won't go in after them," Ford said. "Wait for me."

"OK, OK, sheesh!"

"Swear—" Ford paused a moment. "Swear on our mother's soul. Let me hear you say it."

Stan heaved an elaborate sigh, but said, "I swear on our mother's soul that I won't go rushin' in if they call me. I'll wait for you before I shoot or go in or anything."

"Then you can go."

"Thank you so much," Stan said.

"That means a lot to me, Stanley." When preoccupied, Ford wasn't all that good at catching sarcasm.

Stan again drove Wendy and Dipper up to the Shack in his El Diablo. The building looked the same as when they had left it—no better, no worse. A significant lack of wildly-sprouting, alien-looking plants pulsating with an eldritch, nauseating life force showed itself. They saw only just lawn, streaked with remnants of snow and not yet green, interrupted by pine and fir trees, all around the Shack. No unsettling shrieks and cackles interrupted the birdsong and woodpecker drumming. A suffocating foeter failed to emanate from the building and did not overpower them.

"Ready for this?" Dipper asked Wendy.

Wendy's jaw jutted. "Let's do it."

With his right hand, he held tight to her left. In his left hand, he held Ford's most sophisticated anomaly detector. Unlike Dipper's simpler version, this one did not have to be tuned. It constantly swept all levels of reality and its readouts reported anything beyond the ordinary Gravity Falls weirdness. Wendy held in her right hand a threat detector that would immediately sound an alarm in case of any degree of psychic assault.

Holstered at their hips were two quantum destabilizer pistols, set to medium-high: not STUN but ELIMINATE.

The two took deep breaths, and hand in hand, they crossed the lawn and passed through the unicorn-hair barrier. It prickled their skins and made their hair bristle with static electricity but did not impede them.

They paused on the porch to take readings. Dipper asked aloud, "Grunkle Ford? Are you receiving this?"

"Mason, when you finish a statement, say _over_. Over."

Stan's voice: "Sheesh, and you complain about Trigger! Over!"

Dipper said, "Sorry, not used to this. The reading's pretty high. Are you getting it? Over."

"I'm receiving it. Spectral and apparitional activity is indicated. The threat detector is within normal range. Where are you? Over."

"About to enter the Shack," Dipper said. "Gift shop door. Over."

"Go ahead. I'm following and recording the readings, so you needn't report constantly. Concentrate on keeping safe. Let me know when you're scanning the Museum door, though. Over."

Dipper opened the door—and Tripper rushed out, frantically running. "Oh, my God, we forgot him!" Wendy said.

"Wendy, when you finish your transmission, say _o—"_

Stan opened the door of the El Diablo, and the dog ran straight to him and leaped inside. "I got the poor little guy, Ford. Get over yourself. Over!"

With Dipper carrying a load of guilt over having left Tripper inside the Shack, he and Wendy crossed the threshold. Wendy comforted him mentally: _Tripper's OK. He got through the boundary just fine. The Witch didn't screw with him._

— _I should've remembered him, though. Here we go. Let's look around._ The gift shop was as quiet as it was any morning before tourists flooded in. Dipper managed to turn on the lights with his elbow. He and Wendy crossed toward the Museum entrance until Wendy thought to him, _Far enough. This is about five feet._

— _Full scan. Start now._

They extended their detectors toward the Museum where the Tarot Witch lurked. The devices made no noise but vibrated in their grip as the scanners looked for something, anything.

Then Wendy's threat detector made a shriek like a siren.

Ford's voice came through the earpieces like a whiplash: "Get out! Get out right now!"

* * *


	10. Brief but Boding

**That Day in May**

_(April-May 2018)_

* * *

**10-Brief but Boding**

"Drop the equipment! Go! Run!" Ford's urgent warning rang in their ears, and Dipper and Wendy ran for it. They felt something, nothing they could identify, but a strong sense that some awful force burgeoned in the Museum and threatened to burst through the locked Museum door.

Holding hands made them blunder against the counter—Dipper cracked his knee and staggered, but Wendy dragged him on.

Contrary to Ford's orders, they didn't drop the detectors, but sped across the gift-shop floor. Dipper had left the outside door ajar, and they scrambled out onto the porch, Wendy back-kicking the door, slamming it shut. They leaped off the porch, not bothering with the steps. Dipper's right knee gave way and he limped as they hurried away from the Shack.

Tripper had bounded out of Stan's car and barked in doggy fury at the house—but he waited for them just beyond the barrier.

Stan stepped from behind the steering wheel and said, "Whoa! Ain't seen that in a long time!"

Gasping, Dipper looked back. The invisible barrier had flared and now was visible, flashing purple as some evil force struck it from inside, rainbow stripes streaming across it in squirming patterns, arcane symbols flashing and then disappearing as something tried to destroy the barrier.

It held. Somehow it held.

"Yeah!" Wendy yelled. "No, it's good, it's good, whatever it is can't come out!"

"What?" Dipper asked.

"It's Ford, can't you hear him?" Stan asked.

"OK, over!" Wendy said.

Dipper put a hand up to his right ear. "I—my earpiece fell out," Dipper said. He knelt. Tripper, standing with rigid legs braced, snarled at the Shack, his whole body quivering, the fur on his nape bristling. "It's OK, buddy," Dipper said, patting him. "We shouldn't have forgotten you. It's all right now."

"Something's happening," Wendy said. "OK, Dr. P, over!" The purple sheen of the protective force done grew transparent, then faded entirely.

Whatever had activated the protective shield, Dipper sensed, had pulled back inside the Shack, like a tide ebbing away. It was invisible, intangible, and yet somehow he knew it had withdrawn, fleeing back into the Shack, into the Museum, into—presumably—the Tarot Witch automaton.

"Nothing," Wendy said. "Yeah, because we held onto our detectors. No threat. Dip, get a reading! Sorry, Dr. P. Over."

Dipper triggered the anomaly detector and blinked down at the readout. "Um . . . background weirdness, maybe five points above the usual."

"Did you get that? Close to background, maybe five points higher. Over." To Dipper, she said, "Dr. P says he's still monitoring the readings, and that's within typical range. What?"

"I didn't say—" Dipper started, but Wendy held up a finger, silencing him.

Wendy said, "Got you, Dr. P. Right. Over."

She tugged the earpiece out and said, "He wants us to come back to his place right now."

Not two minutes later, an agitated Ford met them on his front porch as they got out of the Stanleymobile. "Thank God. The readings I was monitoring were—well, only Bill Cipher matched them." Awkwardly, Ford hugged Dipper and Wendy, and then, more awkwardly yet, Stanley.

"Lay off," Stan said after a moment. "OK, the kids did what you asked for. So how do we get the Shack back from that robot or whatever it is?"

Ford sighed. "That could be complicated."

Tripper, still agitated, growled in a muttering way, gazed up the hill in the direction of the Shack, and barked.

Dipper reached down to pat him and asked, "Is it all right if Tripper stays here, Grunkle Ford? We forgot and left him behind in the Shack, and Mabel would never forgive us if something—"

"Of course he can stay," Ford said. "Um—dogs eat dog food, don't they? I'll send for some. Um-where do you find dog food?"

"The supermarket," Sheila said from behind him. She came out onto the porch. "That's something I can do. What brand, Dipper?"

"Um," he said. Weird. He had fed Tripper every other day or so for months, but what was the name of the stuff? "It's in a red can?"

"It's K-9 K-Nummies," Wendy said, and she spelled it. "If they don't have that brand, any kind except lamb or bacon or ham flavor. Mabel refuses to feed him lamb or pork."

"Got it," Sheila said. "Dear, I'll take your car."

"I'll drive," Stan said. "I ain't needed here, right, Ford?"

"Not immediately," Ford said. "But I do wish you'd return as soon as possible."

"No problem. Be back in half an hour."

After Sheila and Stan set off for town, Ford led Dipper and Wendy into the dining room, where they sat around the table. "I'm so sorry," he muttered as Wendy removed her earpiece and handed it to him. "Had I anticipated the force of that—that manifestation—I would have gone myself, alone."

"Are you both all right?" asked Lorena.

Dipper nodded. "I kind of smacked my leg into the counter, but nothing serious."

"We're OK. We got out," Wendy said. "Look, Dr. P, I'm tired of running. Tell us what we have to do to kill this thing. Come on, together, we all faced down Cipher, and Stan trapped him and you wiped him out. If we could do that, then whatever this is, we can fight it."

"But what is it?" Dipper asked.

Ford drummed his fingers— _tap-tap-tap-tap-tap_ , he didn't use his thumb—and said, "I think the document Agent Trigger sent me might explain that. At least partially. I'll wait for my brother to return before explaining what I believe it reveals."

"At least," Dipper said, "tell us what you think's going on with that machine."

"It's not really the machine, but the cards," Ford said. "They have a dreadful history. However, what I hypothesize is that the fortune-telling machine has a link to an ancient, non-human, evil entity. That's what's broken through inside the Shack. It's trying to manifest itself, to reconstitute the body it inhabited when it was, well . . . no other word for it. The world's worst witch."

* * *


	11. Witch's Tale

**That Day in May**

_(April-May 2018)_

* * *

**11-Witch's Tale**

As soon as Stan and Sheila returned—and Tripper gratefully ate a bowl of Puppy Pep dog food—Ford spread out on the table the print-out that Agent Trigger had sent him.

The forty-seven pages included a thirty-two-page booklet, obviously home-made, with a few crude sketches showing how the mechanism of the Tarot Witch fitted together. That he set aside. Instead, he concentrated on three different pages.

The first, a photographic copy of what looked like an ancient parchment, showed lines of archaic-looking handwriting, with some of the s's replaced with f's. It began,

* * *

_A Warnyng to the Unwary, to flye from the Deftruction yt if to come, if ye Deuill, yt hath latterly Haunted Middlefield, and that Men calle Gryzzelle ye Wytch, be not speedily caft out of ye Towne, or elfe Hang'd._

* * *

"This is really old," Wendy said. "I can barely read it."

Ford nodded. "From a late decade of the sixteenth century, I believe. On the last page of the letter is a penciled note from Mr. Braun noting that the three sheets of parchment were found inside the Tarot Witch cabinet when he first bought it in the 1950s. More troubling is this." He showed them a photo of a similar parchment—except instead of writing it bore a black blotch, ink, oil, or a charred surface, larger than the palm of his hand.

"I can't make head nor tail out of it," Stanley complained, leaning close and adjusting his spectacles. "What's this messy stain here? This paper wasn't found underneath an old-fashioned outhouse, was it?"

"Ew!" Dipper said. "Seriously?"

Ford said, "No, what looks like a stain on the parchment is actually what Agent Trigger identifies as a scorch mark. If it were any more intense, the material would have burst into flame. I cannot be certain, but I am assuming that this was appended to the three-page letter about the witch Gryzzelle. The emblem has been obliterated, but the partially readable lettering resembles the symbol that the alchemist and wizard John Kelly called an Enochian Sigil of Summoning, a very dangerous magical symbol that if read will summon a demon."

"Wait, this is confusing," Wendy complained. "I thought we were talking witches."

"We are," Ford said. "Many a practitioner of the magic arts has attempted to call a demon into existence to do his or her bidding. It never works out well. And I wonder if this particular symbol might have been a rare, truly ancient emblem that relates to a rather notorious biblical figure. What do you know about the Witch of Endor?"

Wendy and Dipper exchanged a puzzled glance. "Uh—where the Ewoks come from?" Dipper asked.

Ford stared blankly at him. "No, it's in scripture. When Saul's kingdom was surrounded by a hostile Philistine army, he tried everything to get a glimpse into the future, because he dreaded battle. When his usual forms of divination, casting lots, dreams, and consulting the Urim and Thummin—"

"Worst law firm ever," Stan explained.

His brother blinked. "No, they were—never mind. When everything else failed, Saul ordered his servants to find someone who had a familiar spirit.."

"Like a cat," Stanley put in.

Ford's expression grew a little haggard. "No, not an animal. That's just a familiar. A familiar _spirit._ I suppose one would say that means a demonic force or entity. Saul's inquiry led him to a woman living in Endor, a town north of Jerusalem. Now, you must understand that in previous years, Saul had exiled all fortunetellers and magicians from his land. Though the king disguised himself, the woman recognized Saul and, knowing he was an enemy of magicians, she at first was disinclined to attempt what Saul wanted—"

"What was that?" Wendy asked. "I think I know but tell us."

"He wanted to summon the spirit of the prophet and advisor Samuel, who had died some time before. Samuel had been critical of Saul but had given him good advice, advice that too often Saul had ignored. The woman—the scripture does not specifically call her a "witch"—performed some ritual under the direction of her familiar spirit, and the spirit of Samuel rose out of the earth and gave Saul a dire prophecy that both his army and he would die if they fought the Philistines. Because Saul had promised the woman that he would not punish her if she did what he asked, he departed and left her alone. Sure enough, the battle ended in defeat for the Israelites, and Saul himself died."

"So the Witch of Endor was a necromancer?" Dipper asked.

"OK, that's somebody who talks to dead people and gets answers, right?" Stan asked.

"Yes to both questions," Ford said.

Wendy asked, "So the fortune-telling machine is the Witch of Endor?"

"No. I really believe the animating force in the automaton is the demonic spirit that was her familiar. Let me explain. The Witch of Endor is mentioned only on one occasion in, um, Wendy, you'd know it as the first Book of Samuel in the Old Testament."

"Get ready for the lecture," Stan said.

Ford simply continued: "Except for that brief biblical story, the Witch of Endor disappears from history. No one knows what became of her. However, in the course of the First Crusade, about the year 1099, one Othos or Othus, a Norman knight serving Prince Englebert of Tournai, captured a grotesque old woman when Jerusalem fell to the Byzantine forces. The scanty histories mention her as always being shrouded head to foot in black vestments and a veil. She seemed to glide rather than walk, and observers thought she was a ghost, an apparition, not a person with a real body. One legend is that anyone seeing her face would die before the following sundown. She has no name, properly speaking, but the Byzantines called her 'Daimona,' meaning 'Evil Spirit.'"

"Was she a robot?" Stan asked sarcastically.

"No, but she wasn't truly human, either. She is mentioned only once in the contemporary account of the fall of Jerusalem, but curiously, in 1100 a mysterious figure, likewise shrouded all in black, is mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles as an advisor to Henry Beauclerc, fourth son of William the Conqueror. At that time, Henry's older brother had become King William II of England. The two did not get along, and when in August 1100 William died in a hunting accident, Henry became King Henry I of England."

"And the robot lady?" Stan asked.

"Not a robot then, a spirit of evil. What follows is mostly conjecture. Only one source tells about a mysterious woman with an elderly voice, one who wore black robes and a black veil and never revealed her face. She advised Henry and at his request created a cursed arrow. In an infernal ceremony, she had anointed the arrow with the blood of a sacrificed child. She gave the arrow to King William, telling her an enchantment would make it hit whatever target the archer aimed at. In turn, William gave the arrow to a nobleman named Walter Tirel, an expert archer, on the morning of a deer hunt, possibly intending for the arrow to kill Henry. Instead, Tirel loosed the arrow at a stag, he said, but the arrow 'as if bewitched,' circled in the air and shot William himself through the heart. When Henry received the crown, he granted the mysterious woman freedom of the realm. Her name, in Norman French, was Démone."

"What does that prove?" Stanley asked.

"Nothing but traveling from Jerusalem to England in just over one year, and during wartime, would have been quite a feat in those days. And the descriptions and the names imply that it's the same woman—or entity, anyway. After that she pops up time and again in European history."

Ford went on to explain that more than four hundred years after William II's death, the spirit apparently was in Milan. "Filippo Maria Visconti, then the Duke of Milan, like Saul, had a burning need to gain a view of the future. He commissioned the first known Tarot cards in Europe, a great artist created them—seventy-eight cards with arcane meanings—and then, in exchange for a terrible promise, the muffled spirit enchanted—or possibly cursed—the cards. From that point on, the cards and the witch were linked."

"What promise?" Wendy asked. "What did the spirit want from this guy?"

"The same thing that drove Bill Cipher when he was imprisoned in the Nightmare Realm," Ford said. "It—she—wanted a body. Physical form."

"What did this duke do?" Stan asked. "Kill someone?"

"In a sense," Ford said. "He gave the Witch a human body. His wife—died under mysterious circumstances. After that, the black-shrouded female figure seemed for the first time obviously had physical form. Visconti, though, tried to trick her."

"How?" Dipper asked.

"The Witch found herself in the body of a woman who was already dead. She'd wanted immortality in a human body. Instead—she found herself trapped in an animate but decaying corpse."

* * *

The witch dropped out of history after 1550. The letter that mentioned Gryzzelle, the Witch of Middlefield, was the next possible mention of the familiar spirit. If Ford's suspicion was correct, someone in that English village had used an ancient cabalistic symbol to call the spirit to him or her. The three pages spoke of a figure swathed in black that people glimpsed in the town.

And then terrible things began to happen—inexplicable deaths, senseless destruction of buildings and livestock, and so on. The letter ended with a call to rid Middlefield of "Gryzzelle," but other sources took up the tale. On a cold winter day in Middlefield, a mob of angry citizens broke into the house of the supposed warlock or witch behind all the destruction, but they didn't find the person. Instead they saw the black-dressed figure slumped on the floor in a corner. When they stripped away the rotting fabric, they found "a Foule stiynking Corpse."

"There's a break in the trail, but from my research, I think the next appearance of the spirit," Ford said, "comes from London in the 1780s and 90s. It involves a Frenchman who had fled from the Terror, a skilled artisan, who made mechanical contrivances—as they were called—so complex that observers thought they were animated by witchcraft."

The craftsman, Pierre l'Ingénieux—"Not a name, but a descriptor, 'the ingenious,'" Ford explained—brought with him the fortune-telling automaton. "You see where I'm going with this," Ford said.

"Yeah, think so," Wendy said. "The familiar spirit lost her body. So in, uh, ghost form, she goes to this Pierre whoever and inspires him to make her a body made of metal."

"With human elements," Ford said. "At least the hair, and perhaps the leather flesh—they were, well—they came from people. When the automaton could manipulate the enchanted deck of cards, they put the demonic sentience into the machine, they infused her with consciousness. What Soos didn't know was that after the machine came into Braun's possession, he did not allow her to use the real cards. Someone in the past had left a warning that the ancient deck should not be used. Instead, Braun supplied only a commercial, non-magical deck. For some reason that Braun couldn't, or at least didn't explain, he left the enchanted deck in its own wooden box, stored in the bottom compartment of the automaton."

"So—Soos made it possible for her to come to life?" Dipper asked.

"Dude, please don't tell him that, ever," Wendy said.

"Bottom line, Poindexter," Stanley said. "What does the Witch want now, and how do we send her to hell? 'Scuse my French."

"We must take away the cards, and if we can, destroy them," Ford said. "That won't destroy the animating spirit, but it will at least remove her power to curse us. As to how we send her—um—away—well, now she has accumulated quite a lot of power. And I think she doesn't care for existence in a machine. She—she wants a body. I think that, there in the Museum—she's trying to build herself one that will last until she can possess one of us."

Stanley stood up. "Then we gotta hit her now, before she gets stronger."

"First," Ford said, waving his brother back to his seat, "we need a plan."

"You sure you're the smart brother?" Stanley asked. "'Cause I already got one."

* * *


	12. Night of the Witch

**That Day in May**

_(April-May 2018)_

* * *

**12-Night of the Witch**

Nobody liked Stan's plan. Ford thought it was too dangerous, Dipper said that if Ford's theory were correct and they tried something like Stan suggested, they could all be killed, and Wendy said, "I hate it. But let's go for it!"

"There you go," Stan said. "You're outvoted!

Ford said, "No, mathematically, two against two—"

"I'll stand with Wendy," Dipper said.

Stanley raised his eyebrows and gave his brother a knowing grin.

Ford shook his head and gave up. "Very well. It's clear to me that we have to do something soon, and I can offer no better course of action. But before we try what Stanley has in mind, we need to gain some understanding of what she's up to in there. That means trying to spy on her, yet no one should go in by way of the Museum door or the gift-shop door. And even if one of us does somehow get into the house undetected, there's still no way of getting close and seeing her."

"Yeah, her mental voodoo is somethin' else," Stan said.

"I think I might have something," Dipper said. "What if we enter through the new wing? It might be out of her range, because we'd have to go all the way down the hall, turn left, then turn right, then go into the gift shop and then through the door of the Museum—"

Wendy nodded. "That door should be far enough away from the Museum so her mojo doesn't scramble our brains. She might not even know we're there."

"You might be relatively safe at first," Ford said reluctantly. "But in the end, approaching and entering her place of power is simply too risky—even for the two of you. You're resistant to her powers, but not invulnerable."

"What if we don't have to go into the Museum at all?" Dipper asked.

Ford gave him a puzzled glance. "Then no purpose is served."

"Let's get a few things and then go up the hill," Dipper said. "I'll explain on the way. This might or might not work, but we have to try it."

* * *

At the Shack, barely inside the protection of the anti-weirdness power dome, the end door led straight into the wing that Soos had built on for Abuelita's room and the nursery and a small bedroom (Little Soos's now) with a half-bath. The half-bath and small room was closest to the exit, and the bathroom was the one that Dipper and Wendy went into. "Let me unscrew the grill," Wendy said, kneeling just inside the door and taking a short flat-edge screwdriver, borrowed from Stan, out of her jeans pocket.

"Quietly," Dipper warned, his hand beneath her hair and on her neck, maintaining their telepathic contact.

"Yeah, I will be." Working quickly and silently, Wendy loosened and removed four long wood screws. "What's the dude's name? I never can remember."

"Hang onto my wrist," Dipper said, crouching beside her. "Just in case she tries to, uh, smite us or whatever." Leaning until his mouth was only an inch away from the air duct, he softly called, "Wax head of Larry King! We need you."

For some seconds nothing happened. Then Dipper heard distant thumps, the bouncing noise somewhere inside the ducts made by the disembodied head, the only survivor, if you could call it that, of the Mystery Shack Wax Museum. Even Mabel's masterful wax effigy of Stan had unfortunately melted during the hottest days of that summer of 2012. The head alone had survived the heat wave by going down to the lowest level and hanging out in the air duct of Ford's lab, level 3. It was cooler there.

The bouncing grew louder, and then the head, a little dusty but energetic, came into view. "New developments in the unfolding story of the Mystery Shack," the head said. "A machine in the Museum is rebuilding itself. Fascinating if true. What are your views on the subject?"

"That's up to you, wax head of Larry King," Dipper said. "The machine's an automaton."

"Automaton!" the head repeated. "For the benefit of those who have never heard the term, an automaton is an artificial human figure, which moves and responds in a lifelike manner by the operation of clockwork!"

" . . . yeah," Dipper said. "We need to spy on the automaton. If I give you a small camera—" he held it up—"could you safely wedge it in one of the air vents that have a view of the Witch? The Witch is the automaton."

"Exclusive candid footage of an unholy machine," the head said. "If I can carry it, I can place it! She pays no attention to me. Is that because I'm not human, or because she's allergic to wax? Let's find out. First, though, you could assist me by removing and cleaning my glasses!"

"Here, I got 'em." Wendy reached in with her free hand and removed his spectacles. "Just a sec."

While Dipper got up and shifted his touch back to her neck, she stood and washed the glasses in the sink, then dried them and polished them with toilet paper. She and Dipper knelt on the tile floor again and Wendy replaced the glasses.

"Careful," the wax head said. "That right ear is a little wobbly ever since I retrieved it from the rat who stole it."

"Huh?" Dipper asked.

"Yes! A rat stole my ear and refused to grant an interview! But I managed to persuade a Gnome to hunt the rat down, eat it, and return my stolen lobe. The Gnome was working on a book, and he wanted me to do an in-depth conversation with him in exchange for my ear, which he kindly reattached. It was an intriguing exchange regarding unknown episodes from the lives of the Pines family, sure to be a fascinating book."

"What book?" Dipper asked.

"Dude," Wendy said, "we're in a hurry."

"It's a collection of untold stories of the Mystery Shack!" the wax head said. "The Gnome is Shmebulock. The interview is a full half hour of him saying that one word over and over. He was very pleased with the result. That's much better, Wendy. Thank you! Now about that camera—is it small?"

"Uh, yes, it is," Dipper said. The spy camera was a cube, only one inch on a side. It weighed next to nothing. However—the wax head had no arms, legs, or body, for that matter. "Now, how can you hold it?"

"Maybe put it in a head band," Wendy said.

"Better idea, I'll clench it between my perfect teeth!" the head said. "Show me how to point it, give it to me, then stay tuned for further developments!"

"Before I do," Dipper said, "promise me that once you've set up the camera, you'll get as far away from the Museum room as you can. Go way down into the lab levels, OK? Hide there until you're sure the automaton's out of the house."

"I understand and will gladly move to that new area," the head said. Dipper switched the small digital camera on and made sure the microphone was also powered. The head opened its mouth, baring its teeth, and Dipper held the little spy camera until it bit down on the device and then hopped away.

Wendy thought to him, _Let's get out, Dip. Don't say anything out loud. I'm getting what Soos calls creep-o vibes._

— _Me, too. Let's go now._

It was the strangest sensation. You've probably had the uneasy feeling, when all alone, out in the forest or stopped at a red light or walking along by yourself or even simply lying in bed at night, that someone is, you know looking at you. Just silently, intently, and with evil intent, staring at you.

That's what they both felt—except they knew the Witch might have sensed their presence somehow and was not looking with her weird purple eyes, but with her even weirder mind.

The two of them, still holding hands, got out of the house and out of the barrier. "Done," Dipper told Ford. "See if you can connect."

The sun had set, and twilight was closing in. Ford, pale and tense, sat at a shaded picnic table, a laptop open and running. "Just a second."

He clicked some keys, and then the screen blurred and resolved into a dark view of the Museum shot from high in a wall, looking down. "Getting a good signal. I'm adjusting to widen the angle and adjust the aperture for a brighter picture."

"What are we seein'?" Stanley asked standing behind his brother and looking over his shoulder. "Oh, that's the Witch, huh? What the heck has she done?"

The figure was tottery, inhuman, and moving on the floor. It did not seem at all aware of the camera but reeled and wobbled as it rummaged in a pile of debris.

"The cord's not plugged in," Dipper said.

"She's disconnected it," Ford said. "She has some source of power. I don't know what it is, though. Something paranormal, no doubt."

"Hey!" Stan yelled. "She unassembled my Sascrotch! That's its bones!"

"They're not bone, but wood," Ford corrected. "Just thick dowels."

"Yeah, but that's what it uses for bones. Aw, for crying out loud—there's its skin, that furry pile against the wall! What the heck—wait, what's all that junk in the back?"

Ford leaned close to the screen, surveying the clutter. "The boards are the remnants of the wooden cabinet. She seems to have rearranged all the rods and struts, cogs and springs, of the metal parts. I think she's building a leg."

"She has three already," Wendy said.

Dipper couldn't see every detail, but now it looked as if the Witch, from the waist up, had somehow regrown or rebuilt the damaged arm. Now its hands moved smoothly, like those unconvincing robots of the Presidents you see in Anaheim and Orlando. It was trying to build itself a fourth leg—if she finished it, her torso, arms, and head would stand upright on a square wooden platform—a panel from the bottom cabinet—with a leg at each corner. The three she had constructed were quadruple-jointed, like the legs of a crustacean, and the ended not in feet but in sharp points.

"Gonna be like she's ridin' on the back of a big spider," Stan said. "Half a spider, anyhow."

It took her fifteen minutes, but then she rose and experimentally moved across the floor, skittery and jerky. The legs were not all the same size, but they worked enough for her to walk, after a fashion. "She's got the magicky cards, look," Stan said.

"Extraordinary," Ford murmured. "She's attached the wooden box to the base, and the deck is in the box. It's like a wooden pocket."

"She must be left-handed," Stan said. "'Cause it's on the left side of that platform, where she can grab the cards quick."

"The right hand is badly reconstructed," Ford said. "That's the one that Wendy chopped, I think."

"I saw it sort of growing back," Dipper said. "It's bone and skin—I think."

"There must have been some, um, some relics of the Witch's body in the mix," Ford said. "I was aware of the possibility but thought only the hair and the preserved skin might have been human. The organic material must be leftovers. Not that the entity originally had a human body—like Bill Cipher, in the very beginning she was a disembodied force, with just enough reality to drape her nothingness in black to give it a shape. But she did, reportedly possess a fair number of humans—ugh. The thought of the clockwork maker putting human bones into the automaton—"

"Her eyes are so weird," Wendy said.

On the screen, whenever the Witch glanced around, possibly looking for more components, the eyes flashed purple, with an unearthly glow.

"They ain't human, are they?" Stan asked.

"No," Ford said. "I saw creatures with eyes like that in some of the worst dimensions I visited. And in the Nightmare Realm. Those are condensed from—it's hard to express—from distilled hatred, I guess you'd say. The creatures that have them see in a different spectrum from us. Our world must appear dark and foggy to her—"

"She wanted my eyes," Wendy said.

"That's sick!" Stan said.

"If she can entrap a human," Ford told him, "She'll go for the eyes first. Remember how Bill Cipher's eye was his weak point? Eyes are very difficult to do."

"Uh-oh," Wendy said. "I think she's leaving the Museum! I can't see anything but her elbows, but it sure looks like she's trying to figure out how to use the doorknob."

"She'll have to find out how to unlock the door, too," Dipper said.

With a clatter that the small camera's microphone picked up, the Witch retreated from the door, took out the deck of cards, shuffled it, and then drew one card and pointed it at the door.

"Whoa!" Dipper yelled. A blinding streak of lightning, purple, had shot from the card. Simultaneously he heard an echoing boom, not from the laptop but from within the Shack.

"The Tower," Ford murmured. "She drew the Tower. That's the one with the lightning."

"What'd she do?" Stan asked. "Bust the door down?"

The Witch replaced the cards in the box and scrambled forward. She vanished. They could see a dusty drift, or maybe smoke.

Dipper said, "I think maybe she blasted the door off its hinges."

"I'll sue!" Stan said. "Fixin' that door will cost a hundred—a thousand—a hundred thousand dollars! Lady, I hope you got liability insurance!"

"I think," Wendy said, "she's in the gift shop now. Probably heading for the front door."

"Which isn't locked," Dipper said.

"We need to get in place," Ford said. "Then I'll deactivate the protective unicorn-hair spell, temporarily at least."

"Fix it so you can start it up fast if we gotta run away from her," Stan said.

"OK, it's getting dark now," Wendy said. "Before full night comes, I say we ought to go there and meet her. And then we can try Stan's plan and see if we got a chance."

"Yeah!" Stan said. "Let's go!"

"Heaven help us," Ford murmured.

* * *


	13. Time Goes By

**That Day in May**

_(April-May 2018)_

* * *

**13-Time Goes By**

When it's 8:00 PM in California, Mabel had to remind herself constantly, it's already 11:00 PM in Georgia. Too many times she'd had an exciting bit of news, had come bouncing in at ten or eleven at night, had dialed Teek's number to share the good word, and had wakened both Teek and his roommate after they'd been asleep for hours.

Now it was eleven-something, Georgia time, and only eight-something in California. Thinking of that as she and Teek lay in each other's arms, not asleep but cozy in the warmth of being together, set Mabel's train of thought on the tracks of Time. "Four days," she said. "Four more days and Spring Break ends and I gotta go back to Olmsted. Want to come with me?"

"More than anything," Teek said, smoothing her hair away from her cheek. "Only I can't. I have to stay here until school ends in May at GCAF." All the students there didn't call the film school G-C-A-F, as Mabel had been doing, but spoke it as if it were a word, geecaff. "But we'll have the summer together."

"Yeah . . . ." Mabel said. "We'll just have to wait. I hate waiting!"

"Don't get all sad on me," Teek half-teased. "Hey, come on. Don't think of it as 'We only have four days.' Think of it as 'Hey! We have four whole days!'"

"It's been so nice," she said. They had plans already for the rest of their week. Teek had made them. Mabel was still a little allergic to sitting down with a calendar and a notepad. "Will it be this nice after we get married?"

"Nicer," Teek said.

"Oh, hey, I totally forgot! Want to go to that big comic convention in San Diego?"

"I can't afford the ticket!" he said. "But, yeah, I'd love to go. Tons of movie people attend. Good place to make some contacts—even though they'll never remember meeting me."

"They would if I was with you. I'd see to that." After a pause, Mabel added, "Isn't that a good idea?"

"It's an idea," he admitted. "Wait, why are you even talking about this? Did you score tickets somehow?"

"Dipper did! You know the show that's gonna be made from his—"

" _Granite Rapids,"_ Teek said. "You told me all about it and sent me art and everything."

"Well, guess where its big public premiere is gonna be!"

"No way!"

"San Diego way! And Dipper's gonna be a guest. And he gets to bring an entourage. I want to be his publicist, but you can be his assistant. You don't have to do any work, though. It's in June—"

"I know when it is!" Teek wasn't being rude, just excited. "Yeah, I'd like to go! Will Dipper be on a panel and all?"

"Yeah, looks like it. And they'll have all the Granite Rapids books there for him to autograph, and we'll get to meet the producer and director and some of the animators and the voice cast. We'll get to see the pilot episode, and they'll have pencil tests—is that what they call them? Pencil tests of some of the other episodes, and maybe some surprises."

"Great!" Teek said. "Will I have to pay for transportation and—"

"Nope! Free ride all the way. We'll get a couple of VIP hotel rooms, or else a suite. Wendy's going, too. And our breakfasts are covered. We get coach seats on flights from Portland to San Diego and back, and guess what? A limo to get us from the airport to the convention!"

"Sounds terrific," Teek said.

Mabel snuggled close to him under the covers and whispered in his ear: "Then thank me properly. You know how!"

* * *

And out in Oregon . . .

There comes a time in any plan when the planner begins to think, "Maybe I shouldn't have . . . ."

At Little Big Horn, Custer's thought was "Maybe I shouldn't have ordered my men to surround them."

As he planned his resignation speech, Richard Nixon's was "Why did those jerks have to get themselves caught?"

As he walked out of the Biograph Theatre, John Dillinger's was "I didn't really enjoy that film. Next time, maybe a Laurel and Hardy."

Regrets, we've all had a few, right?

The moment Ford deactivated the unicorn-hair force field, it spectacularly did nothing at all. It only became visible when something malign tried to penetrate it. And so far the Witch was clattering around inside the Shack. They could hear the horrid _tic-tac-toc_ of the mismatched crab-like legs as she scuttled.

Ford, Dipper, and Wendy wished Stanley luck. "Yeah, yeah," he growled. "Go already. I got this. Hey, you think she can even hear?"

"I can't say," Ford admitted. "But try it."

"I'll count to fifty, slow," Stan said. "Go! One potato, two potato, three potato . . .."

By the time he'd counted out at least a grocery shelf stuffed with family-sized bags of chips, Dipper and Wendy, following Ford's direction, had flanked him, each at about a twenty-five degree angle from him, as if they stood on the hands of a giant clock at five past eleven, while he stood on the bolt at the center of the hands. They weren't all that far away from him—about twelve feet each—and both were armed.

"All right," Ford said. "Everyone double-check to make sure you have a full charge."

"Check!" Wendy called.

"Ready!" Dipper said, but he couldn't help wondering _Am I?_ Already he was wishing that he could stand beside Wendy, ready to take her hand, if the Witch hit them with a psychic attack—

They heard Stan from close to the Shack: "Hey! You in there! Witch! How's the ugly business goin'? I got a nickel!"

Three seconds of silence passed.

Then Stan yelled, "Door's openin'! Count to fifteen and then get ready for us!"

Under his breath, Ford began to count: "One thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three—"

They heard the pounding of feet. Ford fired up the portable floodlight he'd bungee-corded to a tree. They saw Stanley pounding toward them, running all-out, atypically dressed in a trench coat, its tails flying. "Did it!" he yelled. "I'm duckin'!"

He swerved off the Mystery Trail and dived into some brush.

"Steady . . . steady . . ." Ford said.

Dipper tensed. He could see the Witch, a frightening, crustacean-like thing now, like an extremely ugly fashion doll cut off at the waist and glued to the body of a live crab. She found the ground hard going, stumbling and skidding as she hit little bumps and hollows. Dipper couldn't take his eyes off her. The skeletal head craned up, the nose sniffing, the purple eyes glaring.

He heard Stan say quietly, "Got 'em, Sixer. Where do I stand?"

"A little behind me, about five feet away, to my left. _My_ left, Stanley! You're sure—"

"I got 'em. Hey, Witch! Nyaahh! Ya want a piece of me, you clinking, clanking, clattering collection of caliginous—"

The Witch's eyes flared, she reached to the box at her left side, drew a card, and pointed it straight at Stan.

And—

Nothing happened.

She tried again. And again.

"Hey, only a crazy automaton keeps repeating the same failed thing and expecting a different result!" Stan held up something. "Looking for _these_?"

The Witch maintained a terrifying silence, but she made a gesture with her mutilated, imperfectly repaired three-fingered right hand, and Ford yelled, "Down, Stanley!"

Stan dropped to his belly. Dipper felt hot hatred—no other term for it—wash over them and for one terrified moment thought, _We can't do this! I have to get to Wendy!_

He stood his ground.

Ford, visibly staggered by the Witch's attack, nevertheless raised his weapon and fired. He was jerked forward about a foot, then stopped by the rope he'd looped about his waist and tied to a tree ten feet behind him.

But the Witch—

Probably forty per cent steel—

The Witch was caught in the magnetic beam from Ford's weapon. He couldn't move toward her—the anchor rope prevented that—

But she fell forward and tumbled across the grass, arms and legs flailing, cards scattering from her box—

She made not a sound, was probably mute, but Dipper felt her furious scream as she toppled over the rim of the Bottomless Pit.

For an instant, she clung to the edge with two of her bizarre, hooked legs, one made of wood, one of metal.

"I got this!" Wendy, rushing toward the Pit.

Dipper raced around the far edge of the Pit as Wendy struck hard with her axe, splintering the wood, dislodging the metal—

Dipper dived and caught Wendy around the waist before a third flailing leg could stab her, and they fell to the ground.

"Is it gone?" Stan asked. "Ugh. I think I gotta pay for cleaning your spare coat, Ford."

"We have to wait," Ford said. "Everyone, over here."

They joined him. "Everyone OK?" Stanley asked.

"Yeah, now," Wendy said. "For a few seconds there, I was like berserk."

"And I was terrified," Dipper said.

Wendy ruffled his hair, making him feel twelve again. "But you stayed, man."

"Couldn't leave you."

"Yeah, well I wanted to jump in after her and punch her out. I ain't tethered like Ford. You OK, brother?"

"Yes, all right now. I kept imagining how the scenario might go wrong. Mason, kindly start the timer."

"Oh, right."

They all sat on a fallen log. "Cold," Stanley complained, hunching deeper into the coat.

"How did you get them?" Ford asked.

"These?" Stan held up the deck of Tarot cards. "Easy. She came runnin' out, saw you standin' off there in the light, and thought you were me. I came from behind her and—" in the glare of the floodlight, he wriggled his fingers. "Once you've learned how to pick pockets, it's like riding a bike, Sixer. Even when you ain't done it in a long time, you don't fall off so much. I guess we gotta destroy these."

"Yes. They're priceless, but if the Witch gets her hands on them again—"

"She gonna survive that fall?" Wendy asked.

"Difficult to say," Ford told her. "If people fall in, they fall for precisely twenty-two minutes and then are expelled from the Pit again."

"Stan and I have been there," Dipper said.

"Yeah, but if things ain't alive, they never come back out," Stan said. "I musta disposed of a few tons of trash and summonses in the Pit, and none of that ever flew out again. Since she's just a machine—"

"With some human parts, I believe," Ford said.

"I guess it's a toss-up. Hah! See what I did there?" He sighed and said, "When I pinched the cards, I replaced them with a regulation deck. She tried to hex me with the Death card or something, but probably drew like the deuce of spades." He walked over to a stump and bent down to set the Tarot deck on it. "Priceless, huh?"

"Priceless," Ford said.

"Meh. Just another way to say worthless." Stan pulled his destabilizer pistol like Wyatt Earp drawing down on a Clanton. The stump, the cards, and a boulder disintegrated. Well, almost. Most of the boulder remained, with a clean two-foot-diameter circular hole drilled through it. "New attraction," Stan said. "The Kissing Rock. He puts his head and shoulders in one side, she puts hers in on the other side, and if they can manage to kiss, it's true love! Hah!"

"Or two guys," Wendy said. "Or two girls. Let's be up to date on this!"

"Heck," Stan said. "A human and a Gnome! Or—nah, no Manotaur could fit."

It wasn't even that funny, but they all felt an urge to giggle. "This," said Ford, chuckling, "is simply our feeling the euphoria of relief that we're alive. If you three will keep watch, I'm going to re-establish the protective field—"

"Don't you go inside yet!" Stan said.

"No, I'll wait for that. I do want to scan to make sure the Witch left no lingering influence, but—how much time is left, Mason?"

"Eighteen and a half minutes."

"I'll be back in five."

When he returned, he said, "I did a quick scan. Normal Shack readings, which means weird but not too weird. And the protective field is up. If I've miscalculated, everyone run for the Shack when the Witch pops back out."

They waited, too nervous to nod off, though they all needed sleep.

And a little ahead of schedule—Dipper had slipped up and had not started the countdown at the precise moment—a ghastly figure popped up, gibbering and gobbling like a demented turkey.

All the Witch's metal and wooden parts had vanished.

What was left—a skeletal torso, a ribcage, a skull with those purple eyes, wild hair, desiccated skin hard as old leather—flew up and fell back again, flailing and jerking.

Dipper and Stanley caught it in quantum disruptor beams.

Ashes fell as if sucked back into the Bottomless Pit.

"Wait another twenty-two minutes?" Dipper asked.

"That would be safest," Ford said. "I'll remain."

The other three refused to leave him.

They waited it out.

Twenty-two minutes later—

Nothing happened.

"Sometimes plans work out," Ford said, drooping as if all his exhaustion had suddenly fallen on him. "I'm proud of you, Stanley."

"Yeah," his brother said dismissively. "If it has to do with cards, I'm one lucky guy."

"We love you, man," Wendy said.

"Yeah," Dipper added. "We do. Thanks, Grunkle Stan."

"I love you, too, brother," Ford said.

"And I barely tolerate all of you knuckleheads, too," Stan said. "Sheesh! Before we start smoochin' each other, let's go scan the Shack and see what repairs I gotta do before Soos gets back. Then, for God's sake, let's all go home, go to bed, and get some rest."

They didn't see it, because no human eye could, but something still sort of lived inside the Bottomless Pit.

It had no substance, no flesh.

It was mainly malevolence, blended with a sputtering, intermittent self-awareness.

It was . . . an essence.

Not human.

Not organic.

Somehow, and don't ask me or Ford because neither of us knows, that spark of evil intelligence got pulled off the round-trip branch of the Pit and into the infinity branch.

Maybe a day or a million years later, the remnants of the Witch did escape the Pit, but not into our world.

Instead it managed to find its way into the Nightmare Realm, maybe. Or maybe the Land of Lost Things. Or, more likely, into hell.

Whatever.

As Wendy once said as she and Dipper watched the end of a truly awful horror movie—the good guys staked the vampire, exposed it to sunlight, burned it to ashes, encased those ashes in a cube of molten lead, and when that cooled, loaded the lead on a rocket and sent it into the heart of the sun itself—

" _That_ monster ain't coming back no more!"

* * *


	14. The Cleanup

**That Day in May**

_(April-May 2018)_

* * *

**Chapter 14-The Cleanup**

That night Ford insisted that Wendy and Dipper stay with him and Lorena. And their little dog, too.

Ford's house, like the Shack, had a protective unicorn-hair spell around it (and so did Stan's, just up the hill for that matter, and also the college house where Mabel, Wendy, and Dipper lived. Erecting domes of paranormal power had in a small way become a cottage industry).

Anyway, Ford and Lorena slept in the master suite on the right side of the house as you entered. The guest room Dipper and Wendy selected was on the bottom floor of the house, a walk-out daylight basement. It wasn't quite as large as the more formal guest suite upstairs, but they had each other. Tripper decided to curl up just outside the door—they improvised a doggy bed from a sofa cushion and an old sheet, and he seemed perfectly content.

"Too bad," Wendy said as she slipped between the cool sheets, "that Dr. P. wouldn't even let us go in the house to get a change of clothes or my nightie."

"We'll have to make the best of it," Dipper said, clicking off the bedside lamp and climbing in beside her. The bed was full-sized, not even queen-sized, and it was cool down there, so they had to snuggle remarkably close together.

"Aw, man," Wendy said in mock complaint as Dipper stroked her long, smooth back and caressed the swell of her hip. "It's awful when you have to rough it."

"Not the luxury we're accustomed—ooh!—to," Dipper agreed. "Don't squeeze so hard!"

"Told you we're gonna rough it," she whispered. "Unless you're not . . . up for it. Hmm, feels like you're getting there!"

Outside the door, Tripper's pointy ears perked up, and he raised his head. But then he decided that the yips and moans weren't those of someone in trouble. They were part of the human mating process.

Dogs had it simpler. Mutual sniffing of butts, a short romp, and then on for the ride. Back home, Tripper had a lady friend. She outweighed him by twelve pounds and wasn't exactly domesticated. OK, she was a coyote. Being a very discreet doggy, Tripper had revealed the romance to none of his humans—to that day, Mabel and the others thought he'd been neutered because he'd mastered the art of pulling certain appurtenances back inside the inguinal canal, and even a well-trained vet had been fooled.

He wasn't shooting blanks, though. In February, he had a number of passionate encounters with Miss Coyote, and now—though he hadn't yet learned it—he was the father of three fine, healthy hybrid puppies, coydogs as they're called. It's a word. You can look it up. Anyway, that discovery lay in the future. For the moment, Tripper settled down and listened to Wendy and Dipper sounds—gasps, slaps of flesh on flesh, and urgent murmurs and cries of "Yeah!" "Faster!" "Ahh!" and "Oh, Dipper!" "I love you, Wendy!"

The sounds faded to fast breathing, the small smacks of kisses, and happy sighs.

Tripper settled back down, wondering why the two didn't just howl at the moon and get it over with.

* * *

The next day was a busy one. First Ford, Dipper, and Wendy went through the whole Shack, scanning it from Wendy's rooftop hideaway to Ford's secret sub-sub-basement with Ford's most powerful anomaly detectors.

A few bad vibes lingered, but they were psychic residue and were decaying fast. "Fortunately, in this wavelength psychic influences have a half-life of about eighteen hours," Ford told them. "By Friday, the Shack will be back to its usual state. I won't say normal."

Stanley came up and lamented the wreckage. The Sascrotch skin was intact, but the inner armature that supported him lay in pieces on the floor. "The Witch scavenged everything for parts," Ford explained.

"Yeah, she took the Six Pack-a-Lope's antlers!" Stan said. "And the Skull of Modoc!"

"That was not an Amerindian skull," Ford said.

Wendy corrected him: "Nowadays the term is 'Native American,' Dr. P."

"Thank you, Wendy. Anyway, my best guess is the skull belonged to one of those unfortunate lumberjacks killed in the big mudslide back in the 1860s. Better to let it rest as ashes in the Bottomless Pit than to make a show of it."

"Yeah, but visitors want spooky stuff!"

Ford thought a minute. "How about this, Stanley? Through the Institute, I can order a professional replica of a human skull. It's not real, but only a physiologist could tell that."

"How much?" Stan asked.

"I'll donate it to the Museum for free," Ford said.

"Get two," Stan told him.

* * *

Wendy and Dipper reassembled the Sascrotch. "You know," Wendy said, "we could do the jackalope, too. you can find deer antlers out in the woods. They shed 'em every winter."

Dipper got an idea and called Tripper in. The Witch had not taken the pair of antlers that hung on the wall in the gift shop. Dipper showed them to Tripper and let him sniff them. "Go find some of these in the woods," he said. "Bring us back some. Understand?"

Tripper did one of his tricks. It looked simple while being profound. He tapped his right front paw on the floor once. Then he wagged his tail.

He was, as far as a dog can do it, talking. The tap said "Yes," the tail-wag said, "Glad to do it!"

They let him out, and he raced down the Mystery Trail.

By noon, they had repaired everything they could. Some damage remained, but nothing that handyman Soos couldn't fix up in a few hours. Speaking of whom, Soos had taken Stan's call with the report. After putting Soos on speaker, Stan had gone through the list of broken or damaged stuff, with the Tarot Witch being number one—"She's gone, Soos, face it. And good riddance."

"Aw, man," Soos said. "I feel so bad about Mr. Braun and all! He didn't know he was sending me a, like, abomination from beyond. And he maybe died because of it."

"Possibly," Ford said. "But since he seems to have left no close family, I suggest we take care of a decent burial for him and let the dead bury the dead."

"Zombies with shovels?" Soos asked, sounding oddly hopeful.

"Ah—no. That means to let the dead go in peace."

"Oh. That's good, too."

Stan said, "We'll take care of it."

They discovered that Tripper had been busy all morning when they heard him out on the gift-shop porch.

"Holy Moley!" Stan said. "We're ass-deep in antlers!"

Not quite that much, but Tripper had proudly fetched back seventeen deer antlers, from two-pointers up to eight. "That's enough, boy!" Dipper said. "You earned a treat!"

Stan selected two antlers that more or less matched—three-pointers both—and with a small hacksaw he trimmed them to the same size, then glued them to the Six Pack-a-Lope's head. "Good as new," he said as the left one fell off.

With heavy rubber bands they reglued and braced it. Wendy and Dipper had a lot of sweeping up to do—the Witch had left loose cogwheels, springs, splinters of wood, nails, screws, and more trash as she had rebuilt herself. And there was the old-fashioned electric cord with its bell-shaped plug.

"Don't trust anything that was hers," Ford warned. They put everything into a medium-sized wooden crate, and then Ford disintegrated it all with a quantum destablizer.

Wendy and Dipper made a late lunch for them all, not forgetting Tripper, and Ford said, "I've missed a lot of time at the Institute. I'm going in for the afternoon."

"When did Soos say they're coming back?" asked Stan.

"Oh, I thought you heard that. They'll be in tomorrow morning, around eleven."

"Good, then me and Soos will get together and see if we can't whomp up a fake fortune-telling witch thing. With a little cabinetry and a beat-up old store mannequin, we can put something together that won't work but will look scary. OK, before you leave, you sure this joint's clean enough for Wendy and Dipper to stay?"

"It's safe," Ford said. "Absolutely."

Stan yawned gigantically. "Then I'm goin' home and sack out. Man needs his rest."

By three o'clock, Wendy and Dipper were alone in the Shack.

They vegged out for a while on the sofa. Then Wendy asked, "How come you keep lookin' at me that way, Dip?"

"The way you're dressed," Dipper said. "Takes me back."

Wendy was in her green plaid flannel shirt, jeans, and boots. "Want me to do the hat thing, too?" she asked with a grin.

"I find it strangely erotic," he said, mimicking Ford.

She shoved him, then tickled him until he begged her to stop.

"Let's play a game," She whispered to him. Her breath smelled like peppermint.

"What . . . kind of game?" he asked, knowing full well she didn't mean Monopoly.

"I'll be the horny cashier at the counter. You be the naughty guy who seduces me while I'm on the job. We'll do it right there on the counter!"

"That sounds pretty naughty."

"Oh, OK, if you don't—"

He started to unbutton her shirt, slowly, one button at a time, kissing her throat in between. "Did I say I didn't want to?"

* * *


	15. Back to School

**That Day in May**

_(April-May 2018)_

* * *

**15-Back to School**

The rest of that week passed so quickly and uneventfully that we don't need to spend a whole lot of time or space on it. I'll sum up.

Thursday found the Ramirez family pulling into the Mystery Shack parking lot at eleven. The kids jumped out and ran to hug Dipper and Wendy, after they petted Tripper and let him wash their faces with his tongue. First things first.

Abuelita asked, "Is safe now?"

"Just as safe as it ever was," Wendy said truthfully. At the Shack, you took little things in stride, like the ghost of a Samurai, a rampaging Gremloblin, or a visiting creature from the planet Yuggoth, which, as we're reliably told, rolls around the darkness at the far, frozen fringes of the solar system, populated by eldritch horrors from beyond the bounds of Time and Space, though they're OK once you get to know them.

Wendy and Dipper helped haul in the luggage. Soos first went to look at the Museum, where he shook his head. "I still feel sorry for Mr. Braun. He used the Tarot Witch for like twenty-five years and never had any trouble with her."

"Yeah, about that," Dipper said. "Grunkle Ford says it was all caused by that extra-fancy deck of cards. It had a curse on it, and when the Witch used it, it sort of brought her to life, I guess."

Soos drooped a little. "Yeah, my bad. I changed the cards."

Wendy said kindly, "It's not your fault, man. You didn't know."

As if he felt a need to explain, Soos said, "The deck she had been using—that was just packed in, like a cardboard box—was all faded. The, like, cursed ones or whatever were in this fancy wood box lined with purple velvet, and they looked nice, you know? But I guess I should have just got an ordinary Tarot deck from the gift shop and not put that colorful antique one in the booth." He sighed. "Did Dr. Pines say anything about the funeral?"

Wendy glanced at Dipper, who nodded, and she said, "Mr. Braun's will asked that he be cremated and his ashes buried next to his wife's. Dr. P is having the urn expressed to the cemetery where his wife's ashes are."

Dipper added, "The mortuary's gonna take care of the burial, and Mr. Braun's lawyer, who's the executor of his estate, will pay for the funeral-home services."

Soos's lower lip was trembling, and he nodded.

Wendy softly said, "Hey, I called our family minister. Dr. Gaspell says if you want, he'll come to the Shack on Saturday morning and we can have a private memorial service for Mr. Braun."

Soos wiped away a tear. "Like, that would be nice," he managed to say in a choked-up voice.

Dipper told him about Stan's plan to bring in a mannequin and some plywood and Plexiglas and rig up a substitute Tarot Witch. "If he can get everything, he'll bring it up this afternoon," Dipper finished.

Soos brightened at that. "Awesome! If the Shack is in shape to open next Tuesday, I can get it put together over the weekend. I might even be able to, like, make her dispense those little fortune tickets, like the old-fashioned scale at the drugstore gives when you weigh yourself. I could use the machinery from the fortune machine that used to be on the porch and never worked right. I got the moving stuff all fixed up and running, but the rest of the machine was so busted up I never replaced it. I can, you know, build a machine that deals out fortune-telling cards! But I won't make them creepy. Just stuff like 'Your smile brightens everyone's day, dawg.'"

"That," said Wendy, with a grin, "is a great idea!"

A little later, Soos went to inspect the gift shop. He made a shopping list for the snack bar—soft-drink syrups and carbonated water, wieners and ground beef for hot dogs and fries, sandwich fixings. "There won't be, like, ginormous crowds the first few weeks, so I'll just get enough to tide us over week to week."

And then he made sure the cash registers were all in working order and said admiringly, "Oh, dudes! You even polished the counter while I was away. It's shining like a mirror! Like a _mirror_ , dawgs! How'd you do it?"

Dipper blushed tomato-red, but Wendy said casually, "You know, some vigorous rubbing, lots of elbow grease, some other fluids."

* * *

Away off in Georgia, Teek squired Mabel around. Thursday they saw the Atlanta Historical Museum, which unbelievably to her had an entire locomotive on display. Teek explained it was one of those involved in the great locomotive chase, when Union spies stole a Confederate train in Marietta (a town northwest of Atlanta) and took it to Chattanooga, way up at the Georgia-Tennessee border, which was controlled by the Union army. Pursued by another train, the spies ripped up the tracks behind them, paving the way for the Federal troops' march to Savannah and the sea.

The Union men were captured and executed, but it made a great story. "It ought to be a movie!" Mabel exclaimed.

"Uh—it _has_ been made into a movie. At least twice," Teek said. "Once as a silent film, with Buster Keaton. Once as a modern movie. Well, you know, sound and color."

"Aw, another great Mabel idea stolen," she said. "How about a remake? You could do it! We'll call it _Grand Theft Freight Train—The Loco and the Motive!"_

"I'll think about it," he said.

They visited Stone Mountain Park, which has, as the name implies, a huge granite dome as the centerpiece, including a bas-relief carving of Confederate leaders on the side. "Man," Mabel said, "didn't these guys _lose_ that war?"

Teek shrugged. "I think some people are really slow to get the word."

And they visited the Georgia Aquarium—"Makes me think of Mermando," Mabel said. "But it's spectacular and beautiful, and I like the penguins, running around with their beaks in the air. They remind me of Pacifica's parents."

And nearby aquarium was the Children's Museum, with antique toys and other displays—

And best of all, they got to spend the nights together. It can't all be Civil War and museums, you know.

* * *

Sunday morning came and Dipper and Mabel packed the Land Runner.

A lot had happened. Soos had put together the Mystic Tarot Reading Witch. The copy shop had printed reels of cheery little fortune cards—"You never grow old if your heart stays young," "Your best day is yet to come," "Eat a toad for breakfast and the rest of the day can only get better," things like that. Stan persuaded Soos to upgrade the cost for a fortune from a nickel to four quarters, and he'd snuck in an extra fortune so that one time in every thirteen, the card would read "Future hazy. Put in another buck."

The machinery wasn't nearly as elaborate as an automaton's. The mannequin's hand, its finger pointing, already stretched out over the deck of perfectly ordinary Tarot cards in front of her. When you dropped in your quarters, a small tablet built into the surface would show a rapid series of Tarot cards. Then one—never a scary-looking one—would stop, the finger would lower and touch the picture on the screen, gears would whir, and the benign fortune would come out a slot at the front.

To compensate for all the niceness, Melody had given the mannequin a makeover with a mop for hair, a nose extended and hooked by an application of wood putty, every other tooth in the mannequin's smile blacked out, warts added, a grayish, unsettling complexion painted on, eyebrows made bushy and angry—the usual deal for a witch. Stan was pleased, and Little Soos and Harmony were not even scared.

The memorial service for Mr. Braun, whom none of them really knew, was brief but touching. Dr. Gaspell read from Psalms and took as his theme "No one who passes from this Earth with mourners and memories goes into the darkness alone." Soos wept like a baby, but afterwards felt better.

On Sunday, Dipper and Wendy arrived at the airport in Medlock about an hour early. There wasn't a heck of a lot to do, so they sat in the waiting area innocently holding hands and having a little mental make-out session, right there in public. Tripper in his travel crate on the floor beside Wendy's chair, obviously knew something was up, but human passers-by saw the young couple sitting together, gazing off dreamily into the distance, and occasionally twitching or squirming a bit and thought, "Cute couple. But those seats must be uncomfortable!"

Mabel's flight was about fifteen minutes late—returning, the aircraft usually faced headwinds—but she bounced out, took Tripper outside for a little walk, and left her carry-on, her big suitcase, and the dog crate for Wendy and Dipper to handle.

They stowed everything in the car, Mabel asked, "Hey, can I drive? I haven't driven in a week!" and with her at the wheel and Wendy riding shotgun, they set off for Crescent City.

It is pleasant to report the drive was easy, no accidents occurred, and they agreed to order food for Dipper to go pick up for dinner. He would also stop at the grocery for eggs, bread, and milk.

They were home again, and now the big thing on the horizon—aside from finishing the term with good grades—was that nagging question of Wendy's surprise birthday party.

May was coming up soon, and the twenty-first would be there only three weeks after it arrived.

But Mabel had shifted gears and was on the job.

* * *


	16. Behind Her Back

**That Day in May**

_(April-May 2018)_

* * *

**16-Behind Her Back**

Out of the way, Mabel coming through!

The rest of April passed normally enough. Soos reported that business was steady, not far behind last year—which had set a record—and that the new Tarot Witch was popular. "I was worried that, like, you know, the cards would transform or some junk, and start to give out death threats? But it's working sweet, and people kinda like the corny cheerful fortunes. It's a hit, dawgs! I kinda liked working on the one with all the clockwork, but this one's probably a lot better than one that might bring on the Apocalypse or some deal."

Once a week, normally on Saturday afternoons, Mabel face-timed with Widdles and Waddles, courtesy of Aunt Sallie, who had the patience to stand there holding her mobile phone for ten minutes or so while Mabel gossiped to her pigs, who obviously recognized her image and voice and who grunted back any time she paused.

College was college. Dipper agonized over a rare C plus grade in his advanced calculus class—the exam was on paper, and he had not noticed that the exams were numbered "Page 1 of 7" at the top right, and his copy had only six pages. The final one had the last two problems.

He'd lost not one point off the seven problems he did. He'd turned in the answer sheets confident that he'd made an A. And then he got them back with a big bloody red **78%/C+** off to the right of his name. Only when he asked the professor why he'd scored that low when all the answers were correct did he learn that he'd missed two items. The professor had said, "A student has to take care, Mr. Pines. Next time double check to make sure you didn't receive a faulty exam sheet. Just check the page numbers to be sure."

Dipper's heart sank. His lowest grade in the class to that point had been a B+. A quick check showed that his average had dropped from a solid A to 91.2—and the STEM department considered 93 the minimum for an A. However, the next week's exam—only five problems total this time, on three pages, he triple-checked—was a snap, and he made a hundred, pulling his average back up again.

And then on the last class meeting in April, while advising the class how to prep for the final—advising the survivors in class, that is, because they had started with 24 students and five of them had dropped out at mid-term, accepting a W grade (it didn't count against their GPAs) rather than a W/F (which counted zero and dragged down the GPA), the professor had casually added, "When you work out your averages going into the final, remember that if you've done every weekly test, you can drop the lowest grade."

Well, glory hallelujah. That tidbit at least sent Dipper into May in a much more cheerful frame of mind.

Wendy was coming through with a good solid A, too—and a special commendation from her advanced forestry class. She was the top student in that one, and Dr. Deavers had given her an A+ for her study of invasive plant species, with a note:

* * *

_It's a pleasure having a dedicated and hard-working student in my class. Wendy, just between us, you have put the graduate students to shame. Excellent work! Congratulations._

* * *

OK, her other classes were a little bit tougher, but even though she sometimes had to struggle, her lowest average was a 93.3—still in A territory. "I oughta take this back to my Dad's and stick it on the refrigerator with a magnet," she told Dipper, showing him Dr. Deavers's note. "'Hard-working.' And I was so lazy as a teen-ager. Who'd have thunk?"

Dipper's appearance was changing as the weeks went by. He'd stopped shaving when they'd gone up to Gravity Falls for the break, and he didn't resume. Mabel had suggested, "Since you gotta meet the public as Stan Mason, Boy Genius Book Author, you need to re-grow your beardy beard."

The first time had produced mostly stubble that barely filled in, but something had goosed his facial follicles—"Workouts with Wendy, if you know what I mean," Mabel had said—and this time after a month he had a respectable, if not spectacular beard going. Wendy complained for the first two weeks—"Feels like a porcupine," she teased—but then said, "Not bad, man. We'll trim it up before San Diego, and then your photos will look all mature."

He had to send a photo to the convention folks in early May, and for that one, Mabel attacked with an eyebrow brush to darken his whiskers and his eyebrows. When he saw himself in the mirror, he demanded that she take about fifty per cent off, so he shampooed, and she re-applied a little more sparingly.

Mabel borrowed some costumes from the theater department of Olmsted and she and Wendy posed him in four different ones. One had him all tweedy in a herringbone sport jacket (leather patches on the elbows, of course) and a conservative gray tie. Mabel suggested a pipe, but both Dipper and Wendy nixed that. "His readers are kids," Wendy reminded Mabel. "Don't want Dipper to glamorize smoking."

Mabel pretended to be stunned. "Did you just use 'Dipper' and 'glamorize' in the same sentence?" She didn't push it, though, and settled for a photo of Dipper sitting at the picnic table in the back yard, leaning forward to pet Tripper, who really did look as if he were smiling for the camera.

After the shoot, they all pondered the photos. Dipper went with the one Wendy liked best—a burgundy turtleneck under a casual zip-up fawn-colored jacket, and jeans. "Put on some specs," Mabel said as they posed him, "and you'll look like Grunkle Ford."

Dipper nixed the glasses. They shot several photos of him in the outfit, though, and Wendy selected one of him on the rustic back deck, in one of the wrought-iron chairs and Tripper next to him in another. Dipper was gazing off into the distance, and Tripper was looking up at him in full faithful-dog pose.

They sent a high-res copy of that to the con committee and another to Dipper's book agent, who called him moments later: "Sweetie! This is Bea. Love the photo. How old are you now?"

"Eighteen," Dipper said.

"I would've guessed twenty. Let's hint that you're twenty. I'm going to send this to your editor and suggest they use it as a jacket photo. Is that all right with you?"

"Sure, I guess," Dipper said.

"Great. Who's the dog, by the way?"

Dipper chuckled. "That's our dog—Wendy's and my sister Mabel's and mine. His name's Tripper."

"Well, he's a cutie! T-r-i-p-p-e-r, right? What breed is he? Not a Chihuahua, but his head has that sort of look."

"He's a mutt," Dipper admitted.

Mabel, who was close enough to listen in, corrected: "Finest kind of mutt!"

"I will add that to the description," Bea said. "Oh, I've got vouchers for your airline tickets to San Diego. Portland International Airport you're flying out of, right?"

"Right," Dipper said.

"Give me the names, sweetie. Have to have those, and don't forget, everybody has to have a photo ID for the plane. Will a two-bedroom suite at the Sterling do? It's not the closest hotel to the convention, but it's only two blocks away, and it's a four-star place."

"That'll be fine," Dipper said. "OK, the names—"

"And their positions," Bea said.

"Uh, OK. T.K. O'Grady, first." He spelled it. "He's going to be my publicist—"

"Assistant!" Mabel said.

"Just a second." Dipper held the phone down. "Mabel, let Teek be the publicist. If you are, you'll have to follow me around taking pictures. Teek loves to shoot photos, and you can have plenty of time to go see your favorite movie stars—"

"OK, but I'm your chief assistant. And make-up artist."

Dipper said into the phone, "Mr. O'Grady is my photographer and publicist. Ready? Mabel Pines—"

"Mabel Mason!" Mabel said.

"Mabel Pines," he said firmly. "She's my twin sister and my chief assistant. But you don't have to put in the sister part, OK? And Wendy, uh, Mason, I guess, my wife."

"You don't want to reveal your secret identity?" teased Bea.

"Not . . . just yet. Maybe when I'm finished with college," he said.

"All right," Bea murmured. "We won't say Mabel is your sister, just your assistant. Let's see. . . they need a short biography of Stan X. Mason. Between 100 and 200 words. Do it in third person. Just remember the information that we put on the 'About the Author' pages and don't contradict that."

"I can do that," Dipper said, jotting a reminder to himself.

"About your photo—it's fantastic. I'll warn you, sweetie, you'll run into some Internet and TV people who'll want to interview you. Probably some print media, too. I'm going to put a time limit on the interviews, though, 'cause you don't want to tire yourself out. Fifteen minutes tops, no more than three a day, spaced out. Is that all right?"

"Uh, fine with me," Dipper said. "Anything else?"

"Baseball bat," she said. "Bring one for Wendy."

"I . . . don't get it."

"Oh, sweetie, she's going to want to fend off all the fangirls who'll throw themselves at you! And that reminds me—autograph all the books you want, but don't sign any body parts. I've had other writers get into serious trouble that way."

"I'll remember that," Dipper said, blushing.

When he hung up, Mabel asked, "What'd she say, what'd she say?"

With a glance at Wendy, who was giving him an amused look, Dipper said, "She predicted that young female fans are going to swamp me."

"No, they won't," Wendy said. "Call her back and tell her Wendy is your chief of security. And she's gonna be carrying an axe."

Dipper didn't, but he felt strange all the rest of that day, as if he and Stan Mason were really and truly two different people. He stared at the photo. Despite the dog's adoring stare, somehow Dipper wondered if he met this Stan Mason if he'd quite like or trust him. The guy's dreamy smile looked a little smarmy.

Strange. It was the kind of news that should have put him on top of the world, but instead it just sort of . . . well, scared him.

"Hey, we forgot," Mabel said the next morning, Saturday, at breakfast. "What's Tripper gonna be at the convention?"

"Absent," Dipper said. "Sorry, only service animals are allowed. And he gets a little nervous around crowds. From what I understand, ComicsCon is a real crush. I think Trip will be happier hanging out with Soos's kids than being shut up in a cage in a hotel room all day."

"Yeah, and not all hotels are pet-friendly," Wendy pointed out.

"The more shame to them, then!" Mabel said indignantly. "But, yeah, you have a point. How long will this be?"

Dipper said, "We'll fly down on a Wednesday, check into our hotel, get our convention badges and swag bags—"

"What's that?" Mabel asked, suddenly alert.

"Well—they give out lots of freebies, and some will be in the bag, and you'll collect more every day. It's, you know, merchandising—magnets and stickers, maybe a coffee cup with a superhero design, giveaways."

"Put me down for two swag bags!" Mabel said.

"You can have mine," Dipper told her. "Where was I?"

Wendy said, "Getting our badges on Wednesday afternoon."

"Oh, right. There's nothing much going on that day, but the studio people want to take us out to dinner—"

"Jackpot!" Mabel said.

"—and then Thursday morning, the real convention gets underway. I'm on a panel with other new writers at one in the afternoon, I have a book signing from two-thirty to three-thirty if anyone shows up, and then we're supposed to meet four or five of the cartoon voice cast that evening and have dinner again—"

"Double jackpot!"

"Um," Dipper said, "then on Friday at one, there's the premiere of the series in the big theater hall. A half-hour for them to show the episode, and then an hour for me and the producer, director, and voice actors to answer questions from the audience. That's repeated on Saturday afternoon, but the Q&A will be cut down to thirty minutes. At four, I have another signing session, with the voice actors at the same table. They'll be signing artwork of the characters they play. Sunday, pretty easy, there's something called the Hangout, where they ask guests to sit and schmooze with attendees for an hour at a time. And I'll get a chance to see some of the convention. Then Monday afternoon we fly back."

"Listen to you!" Wendy said. "Q&A and schmooze! You're getting to be all pro writer, dude!"

"Well," he said, "I _do_ get paid. Here, read this and if it's OK, I'll send it to Bea tomorrow for her approval."

"Your bio," Wendy said, taking the sheet of print-out.

"Read it out loud so I can check for errors," Mabel demanded.

Wendy read:

* * *

_Stan Xavier Mason was born one August 31 in a small town in Oregon that isn't even on the map. He and his sister, Mavis—Mavis?_

* * *

"I made that up as my nom de sister," Mabel said. "So far, so good. Do go on."

"Oh," Wendy said, before finding her place and continuing:

* * *

_He and his sister, Mavis, really did spend summers with an eccentric uncle who ran a tourist trap in a northern California town. Stan turned his memories of that experience into the Palms twins' adventures in mystical Granite Rapids, California. He is working now on the fifth book in the series. Recently the Ditzney Company has turned the first books into a brand-new animated adventure series, Granite Rapids._

_When he is not writing, Stan attends college in California, where his beautiful wife, Wendy, is also a student. The two of them and Stan's sister Mavis love to go back every year to the weird and quirky small town that inspired Granite Rapids._

* * *

Dipper said, "The studio's going to add some details about the TV show. Is that too braggy?"

"Too modest!" Mabel said. "But don't worry. My professional-level photo of you will make up for that. Mabel approves. Send it in!"

"All right," Dipper said. "It's funny, though. I almost feel like this guy is someone I don't really know and might not even like if I met him."

"Nobody ever does at first," Mabel cheerfully assured him. "But once they get to know you, they realize you're a pretty neat guy. Neurotic, but neat."

"And I love you both," Wendy said. "You, Dipper, and Stan Mason, too."

"OK," Dipper said. "Then I'll send it to Bea."

* * *

During the second week in May, Mabel kept busy. "Finals coming up, you know," she explained. However, that was misleading. True, she did study, but also she stayed on the phone for much of every day. It was all shaping up. Wendy's birthday would come on a Monday, which was inconvenient for some, but you can't fight the calendar, so she had to deal with it.

For a couple of days in the first week of May, she worried because Grunkle Ford and his wife Lorena had started to deal with a case: In Hawaii, where a new hotel was going up on the big island, a terrified night watchman at the construction site had suddenly quit. And the next one, after one night, and the next one after that, after his first night. That one finally told someone what was scaring him, and that person insisted they go to the police, and the police heard them out but didn't believe the guy.

Except for a technician who kept the police computer system working. He had a connection, called her, and she happened to be a GIB—a "guy" in black—a member of the Agency. She called the case in, the report came straight to Ford's deputy director, formerly Agent Powers, and he called Ford, waking him at four in the morning.

"It's a case of the Marching Dead, sir," Powers said.

Ford sighed and rubbed his eyes with thumb and forefinger. "Then the problem is the location of the construction site. Let's mount a D-7 operation. We have a substation on Maui. Get in touch with Kamehameha Station chief Kekoa and have her fly a team over to the island of Hawaii ASAP. Report to me in . . . five hours to bring me up to speed, unless there's an emergency."

He got out of bed and went to his home office. He knew of the legend already: If anyone disturbed a spot sacred to the ancient Hawaiians, a cadre of ghosts—ghosts of warriors, wearing helmets, clutching torches, and marching to the beat of drums and the sound of conch-shell horns, passes through the spot. If a living human encountered them, they took his or her soul, and the spirit then would have to join the march for all eternity.

Operation D-7 called for intervention from cooperating organizations. In this case, representatives of the Geological Survey would notify the company planning the hotel that the site was seismologically unstable. Permits would be revoked, and if the construction company wanted to litigate, fine. It would take about ten years to work through the courts. On the other hand, if they wanted to relocate the proposed hotel, a different site would become available.

Within two days, the situation was resolved. The cooperating Geological Survey and the Division of Forestry and Wildlife designated the abandoned construction site as a wildlife preserve. Ford was satisfied. Lorena mildly complained.

See, they had gone together to personally supervise UFO investigations in broiling-hot New Mexico, an unusual haunting in North Dakota (in the middle of a winter storm), and a potential dimensional rift in the middle of a Louisiana swamp. But they stayed home for a problem in Hawaii.

Anyway, it looked as they would be able to come to the party.

Mabel didn't send out RSVP invitations. She simply called the guests and told them they would be there. So far, no one had declined, and Soos even cheerfully said that Mondays were still off days for the Shack, and he'd arrange not to open the next Tuesday until one P.M.

A few just couldn't make it. Pacifica was actually taking college finals on that day, but she said she'd face-time long enough to wish Wendy a happy birthday. Grenda and her husband had to be in Austria for the annual celebration of Bratwurst Day—they had to cut the sausage—but she would similarly face-time.

Other than that, it shaped up to be a grand gathering. Dipper reminded her that he would have track meets every Saturday through the end of the month, and she grumbled that she could really use some help.

"Eloise," Dipper suggested.

"I'll call her," Mabel said, brightening. "Maybe just for those Saturdays."

Otherwise the month went on as usual—just with Wendy becoming vaguely aware of the Mystery Twins being a little secretive, as if something were going on behind her back. She suspected that it involved ComicsCon and their trip down in June to be there for the grand premiere of _Granite Rapids,_ the cartoon show based on Dipper's books. Because Dipper had his mental shield up—that had been hard for them to learn, how to keep a little corner of their minds private, because when they shared thoughts and feelings by their touch-telepathy, they tended to share everything—but because both Dipper and Wendy had learned to protect some corner of their minds, she didn't get a glimmer of the truth.

And, sad to say, she had no reason to expect a surprise party. She'd never had a surprise party. Never had a birthday party, for that matter. Manly Dan always remembered and always had a gift for her, but no cake, no little conical hats, no big gathering. A birthday was just another day in the Corduroy house, though Dad might say, "Here you go, Baby Girl. Happy birthday." And he'd hand her something—she got her ushanka, her trapper's hat, that way—unwrapped. Then on with the day.

When she started middle school, some of her friends would have little get-togethers with her, after school (of course her birthday fell on school days more often than on weekends) at the soda fountain or in Greasy's. Sometimes Tambry would even buy her a birthday cupcake (No birthday cakes at the Corduroys' house, either). And trinkets for presents, a charm for the charm bracelet she didn't have, or a photo of Robbie, thank you very much, from Robbie, once a phone case that Tambry got her for her flip-phone.

OK, so in high school the not-a-party afterschool meetings got to be a little more fun. Nate and Lee and Thompson were part of the group, and Tambry and Robbie still. Once in Yumberjacks' they had embarrassed her by singing "Happy Birthday." Thompson had given her a decorative envelope with two tickets for the movie theater where he worked. Tambry gave her a photo frame made from local wood—probably a tree Wendy's dad had cut, come to that—and Robbie gave her a pair of fingerless gloves that fit him, but not her.

But, you know, those weren't real parties. And certainly not surprises. They got to be a routine May thing.

Now, in college, what with the increasing rush toward finals, Wendy kept so busy that she didn't have time to think of a party. If she had, she might have thought it would be nice to maybe go to an early movie with Dipper and Mabel. Assuming she didn't have to spend all evening cramming for the dreaded math final. Even with the science she was taking, that was still her most challenging class.

However, when the exam schedule came out, it appeared that the math exam would fall on May 25, Friday. It was the only exam she had that day—taking a little of the pressure off. The day after her birthday, May 22, she had two exams, but one was English, a course she and Dipper had together, and she was in good shape there. Her Forestry exam followed that one, and glory be, Dr. Deavers had told her that if she wanted, she could exempt that one and still earn an A in the class. She had one exam each on Wednesday and Thursday but was confident she'd face no serious problem on either of those.

So—a week before her birthday, she asked at breakfast, "Hey, guys, want to go to a movie or some deal next Monday night? It's my birthday."

"Is it?" Mabel asked. "Oh, wait, I think I promised to go to Eloise's recital that night. I'll check, though."

"I'm up for it," Dipper said. "Let's wait for the weekend and see what's playing."

"Good deal," Wendy said.

"Maybe we can go out to dinner?" Mabel asked. "Early, if Eloise's recital is that night."

"Sure," Dipper said. "That's a study day for us—no classes, because finals start the next day."

"Lucky," Mabel grumped. Because of a slightly different schedule, her finals weren't until the next week—and so she wouldn't be able to leave for summer in Gravity Falls until Saturday, June 2.

"Hey, Mabes, don't sweat it," Wendy said. "We'll stay and keep you company and then we'll all go to the Falls on the same day. Soos isn't expecting us to report to work until the fourth of June, anyhow."

"Yeah, but I mean, even Teek's getting out of class earlier than me! He'll be flying back to Portland this coming weekend. And I don't even know if I'll get to see him before June! Unfair!"

"Look at it this way," Dipper said. "While we're waiting for your finals week to end, Wen and I will get the house all cleaned up for the summer. You won't have to help with all of that."

"Silver lining," Mabel grudgingly said. "Hey, Wendy, what do you want for your birthday?"

She shrugged. "Birthdays aren't a big deal with me."

"But I want to get you something," Mabel said.

Wendy grinned. "Any little token. Don't, like, go all-out or anything."

"You got it," Mabel said.

But from behind Wendy's back, she winked at Dipper.

* * *


	17. Spiffing Up

**That Day in May**

_(April-May 2018)_

* * *

**17-Spiffing Up**

_**From the Journals of Dipper Pines:**_ _Sunday, May 20. Bad news and good news. WAU won't be going to the Nationals. We came up just agonizingly short. Oh, well, as the coaches said cheerfully, there's always next year._

_The good news: We had a handful of first-place wins. I won the 100 and the 400. Don't ask about the shot put, it's too embarrassing! But that brings my first-place record up to six for the season, tying with Dana. The team gave us a big round of applause when we collected our trophies. Coach asked if I was going to come back next fall and I said sure. He told me not to lose a step in the summer and said I wouldn't need to try out. So there's that._

_I don't know. It would be great to get to the Nationals, but when I think about another week of training and then flying out to Des Moines, well—I just can't wait to get back to Gravity Falls and take 'er easy for a while!_

_Man, it is a long bus ride from Bakersfield—very dry and hot!—back up to Crescent City. We left at noon, and we won't be there until after midnight. Good thing tomorrow is a study day for Wendy and me._

_I called her as soon as the meet was over. She really wanted to come down on Friday, but she's studying hard for her math and biology exams, and we both knew she wouldn't be able to do that if we drove, or even flew, down. Mabel couldn't make it for similar reasons, plus she's thrown herself into party planning so hard it's a wonder she didn't give herself a concussion._

_So here I am, last seat on the bus, all to myself, trying hard to one-finger type on my tablet. It's night, and the guys are snoring and the girls are laughing at how loud they are. Did I mention Jaime? The pole-vaulter and javelin guy? He did pretty well today, too, with a third place and a second. He was bummed about our missing the Nationals by just a few points, and for the first leg of our ride (we stopped for burgers close to San Francisco), we talked a little._

_He asked me out of the blue, "Is it true you're living with that tall redhead we see you with?"_

_I said, "Well, yeah, 'cause we're married."_

_He didn't believe me until I showed him one of our wedding photos on my phone. He asked me, "Does she have a sister?" I told him no._

_Then he wanted to know how she was in the sack._

_I said, "You should know better than to ask that."_

_He got sort of pissed, I guess._

_Anyway, when we got back on the bus after dinner, I went to this back seat and he sat with another guy, Davyn. They kept looking around at me, so I started to read a book on my tablet—not a novel, but a reference book on literary concepts. I'm carrying such a high average in English that I could even skip the final and still pass, and if I manage a low C on the in-class summative essay, that won't bring my grade down to a B, so I don't have to worry, but I might as well bone up. I can share the info with Wendy, and then we'll both have an almost airtight chance of A's._

_I wonder how close we are to home. It's a little past midnight, so we should be on campus in half an hour or so. Then just a short drive to the house and Wendy._

_Can't wait to see Wendy again. I'll try not to wake her up if she's already asleep, but no promises!_

* * *

After the mandatory congratulations for his wins and commiserations for missing out on the Nationals the next morning at breakfast, Mabel said, "Hey, guys! We're gonna have Wendy's birthday celebration tonight at Serafina's. I got reservations for seven, and it's a fancy-shmancy place, so be sure to dress up!"

"Dressier than this?" Wendy asked. She was in jeans and green flannel shirt, still sleepy-eyed.

"Well, yeah!" Mabel said. "Happy birthday, birthday girl! And yeah! Like—I know, that black-lace knee-length, with your black heels!"

"They hurt my feet," Wendy said. "And I don't know. That's cut kinda low. I get self-conscious about showing my cleavage freckles."

"That's why there's the lace over them!" Mabel insisted. "Ok, not the heels, how about the black ballet flats?"

"Yeah, I'd like that better," Wendy said. "Dip? OK if I wear that black dress with the lace sleeves?"

"You don't have to wear anything to please me," Dipper said.

"Pa-zow!" Mabel said, turning a thumb down. "No cheesy lines after you're married, Broseph! Ten points from Gryffindor!"

"He can use lines on me if he wants," Wendy said. "I know. I'll wear the black dress, and I've got a pair of stockings I've never worn. Black. Fishnets."

"Go for the sex-EE!" Mabel yelled, giving an air-punch. "Ha! Look at Dip's face! Fishnets are mandatory! OK, I did some negotiations, and so not a word about who pays. I can put it on my credit card! Dad said yes, and Grunkle Stan said he'd cover any extras, so he's putting a couple of hundred in my debit account today."

"Whoa," Dipper said. "What did you do to Stan?"

"I'm just a deserving niece," she said. "Dipper—you gotta look halfway decent tonight, too. Serafina's is a classy place. You will wear—"

"Tan sport jacket, tan slacks, no tie."

"You don't have a vote!" Mabel said. "You will wear the black suit—"

"Come on," he said. "It isn't a funeral!"

Mabel ground her teeth. Then she asked Tripper, "What do you think? How about his dark gray wool sports jacket, gray pants, black loafers—be sure to shine them!—and a white shirt with the dark gray tie. Or the mulberry turtleneck?"

The dog appeared to think it over, then woofed. "Fashion judge says the turtleneck," Mabel said. "I suppose that's OK. This is California."

"Can do," Dipper said. "And my black loafers are shined."

"Shine 'em again! And go get your hair trimmed! Think neat. Wendy—hmm. How about a trip to the Beauty Mark? Facial, mani-pedi? Sound good?"

"Actually, I'm not crazy about shining up logging boots," Wendy said. "That beauty-shop stuff makes me feel too phoney."

"You are a beautiful girl!" Mabel insisted. "And you'll feel so much livelier if you drop in for a little TLC. Besides, as the French say, _Il faut souffrir,_ uh, how does it go? _Pour avoir un cul."_

Wendy shot coffee out of her nose and coughed. Dipper patted her back as she grabbed some napkins and cleaned up. "Mabel," he said, "I think you mean _Il faut souffrir pour être belle._ "

"What did I say?" Mabel asked. French had never been her best subject.

Wendy gasped and replied, "You said, 'One must suffer to have an ass!'"

" _Could_ be true," Mabel said. "If you have hemorrhoids."

"Please, not at the breakfast table," Dipper said. "You OK?"

Wendy nodded. "Just hit me at the wrong time."

"Anyway," Mabel said, handing Wendy an envelope, "your appointment at the Beauty Mark is at ten. Facial and mani-pedi are paid for, tip's up to you. Happy birthday. Dip, your appointment with Monsieur Agrafe at the Clippety Shop on College Street is at ten-fifteen. Don't let him touch your beard, 'cause I'm gonna neaten it up next month before we go to San Diego."

"OK, OK," Dipper said. "Where's my envelope?"

"It's not _your_ birthday," Mabel said smugly.

* * *

When he picked Wendy up at the beauty shop, she came out glowing. "Don't say anything!" she warned.

"Wen, you're gorgeous," Dipper told her, truthfully. "It doesn't hurt to put a little shine on your logging boots!"

"Let's see the hair," Wendy said as they got into Wendy's Green Machine. "Not bad."

"He just trimmed it and shaped it a little," Dipper said. "He suggested cutting the front more, but—Big Dipper, you know." He sighed. "Last month Mabel gave me a printout of an article from a medical web site about using lasers to remove birthmarks—"

"Don't you dare," Wendy said. "Let's go."

Because of her manicure, Dipper was driving the Dodge Dart. He started the car and they headed for home. "I wouldn't. It costs like three thousand dollars, anyway."

"Even if it was a quarter," Wendy said. "I love your birthmark, man! I'd be cool with your showing it. Nobody's gonna bully you about it now."

"Yeah, but old habits, you know."

* * *

All through elementary school, kids had shoved him around and made fun of him. "Bucketface" was a nickname the class bully called him in fourth grade. He started wearing a toboggan cap pulled low, and later a trucker's cap, all the time except when he was in class or safe at home. His mom called him "Dipper," though, until he got used to that and came to like it better than his real name. And he still remembered one morning when he lied and said he felt sick just to get out of going to school.

Mom wouldn't let him do that. "It's the birthmark," she said. "isn't it?"

He could only nod.

"Dipper, honey," Mom said, "You just don't understand. It makes you special."

And he went to school that day—but he had hung around near the teacher even at recess, because Cholmondeley, the bully (it was pronounced "Chumley") was in a mood. As soon as the twins returned home, Mabel went out to play hopscotch with some girls from down the street, and Mom drew Dipper aside and said. "I've got something to show you. It's a superstition, but most superstitions have a grain of truth. Let's read this."

She opened an oversized library book on fortune-telling and divination. The section Mom read together with him was on physical marks. Together they read one paragraph that she had marked with a small yellow Post-It square:

* * *

_Forehead: Ancient beliefs hold that a person bearing a birthmark on the forehead is inclined to deep thought and brilliant ideas. Such a person may be introverted, shy, and unsure, but on the other hand is intelligent and gifted with understanding._

* * *

"And that's good," Mom said. She turned a few pages to another marked paragraph and said, "Now this is the best part. Read this."

Being in the fourth grade, Dipper stumbled over a word or two, but Mom helped out and explained the hardest ones:

* * *

_A birthmark in the shape of Ursa Major_ ("That's the Great Bear," Mom explained. "We know it as the Big Dipper.") _marks the bearer as exceptionally fortunate. The sign of the Bear is the sign of the pathfinder, the guide, the avant-garde_ ("French," Mom explained. It means someone who explores new things and ideas."). _Such a person is innovative, unconventional at heart, though he or she may appear shy and unassuming to the casual observer. As the Great Bear shows the way to the Pole Star, so those fortunate people marked with the sign of the Great Bear are destined to explore new, unconventional, daring, and advanced ideas, techniques, and discoveries. He or she will be a true friend, a loyal supporter, but most of all, in the realm of ideas, a great leader._

* * *

"That's just superstition, though," Dipper murmured, obscurely embarrassed.

Mom held his hair off his forehead and leaned down to kiss his birthmark. "Every superstition," she repeated firmly, "has some grain of truth."

From that day on, thinking about that moment and with the muscle power of Mabel backing him up, Dipper became "Dipper," not "Mason," to everyone, even the bullies. Except Dad, who had a dad's privilege of calling him by his right name, though even Dad eventually called him Dipper most of the time.

* * *

On the way home, Wendy held out her hands, fingers spread, studying her nails. They had been shaped and lacquered, though not colored, and they shone. "Look at these," she said in a tone of mild disgust. "You'd think I'd never done a day's work in my life! These aren't the nails of a lumberjane. They belong to some fancy lady who does nothing all day except sit around on her butt!"

"We know better, though," Dipper said. "Uh, Wen—never mind."

"No, what is it, Dip?" she asked.

"Uh, my hair—if when we go down to San Diego for the convention—do you think people would laugh if I combed it so, uh—you know?"

"So your birthmark shows?" Wendy asked softly.

"Yeah. Stupid idea."

"Not at all. Let's talk about it. I'm all for it. I don't cover my freckles with make-up. It's not ugly, Dip. It's intriguing. But it's your decision." She sighed. "It's the real you. Not like these shiny fingernails that belong to a—a butt-sitting lady!"

"Oh, come on," Dipper said, smiling. "You know, there's an old French saying. Um, _Un cul splendide,_ uh _. . . devrait être assis_. . . uh . . . _sur une belle femme."_

"Translate," Wendy said. "I understood some of it, but—"

"A splendid ass should be sat upon by a beautiful woman," Dipper said solemnly.

Wendy said in a giggle-choked voice, "Good thing for you I'm not drinking coffee!"

* * *


	18. Everybody Sing

**That Day in May**

_(May 31, 2018)_

* * *

**18-Everybody Sing**

Mabel drove to school—her art college ran a week later than the University—and before going in for haircut and beauty treatment, Dipper and Wendy had suited up and run. Tripper came along with them, as he did now and then. They crossed the bridge they'd built across the narrow but steep-sided stream that marked the border between the house property and some National Forest land. Fortunately, the Forestry service kept a thirty-foot-wide strip between the woods and the stream cut and trimmed—a firebreak—and running on the grass was a lot like running their nature trail back in Gravity Falls. Not as hilly, though, because it followed the stream bed.

They had measured out a four-mile course, two miles out from the back gate of the fence, then two miles return run. The marker for the end was a tall pine that years before must have been split by lightning. It wasn't dead, but now ten feet up the trunk divided into two trunks, a tall, narrow Y that showed up clearly. Tripper lagged behind, then surged ahead, according to whether something had attracted his nose and his doggy curiosity.

Wendy and Dipper had just made their turn when he came bounding along, circled them, and started back. "He knows the drill," Wendy said.

"Should," Dipper said. "He's come with us often enough."

"You OK, or want to slow down?"

"I'm fine," Dipper said. "Race you to the bridge!"

"Nah, I don't think I want to—one-two-three go!"

"Cheat!" he yelled from five steps behind her. He leaned into the run and pulled up that sprinting stride. Wendy wasn't a competitive runner, but she had muscles like titanium springs and a seemingly limitless reserve of energy.

But as they came within sight of the bridge, she abruptly stopped and held up a hand, signaling him. Dipper, now only about a step behind, had a hard time stopping without passing her.

Wordlessly, Wendy pointed.

"What's that?" he asked in a whisper.

"Coyote. Look, she has pups!"

The wild animal had emerged from the undergrowth under the eaves of the forest. As they watched, she lowered her head and stared at them but didn't bark or growl. The fluffy puppies romped around her, nipping at each other. Tripper was midway between his people and the coyote, pointing like a bird dog.

"Tripper, no," Dipper said quietly. "Danger."

Tripper looked around and wagged his tail. Then he looked back at the coyote and her three puppies, tilting his head in that quizzical dog way. The coyote nuzzled one of the pups, yipped softly, and trotted off into the woods. Her brood followed her.

"I haven't heard 'em howling in the night," Dipper said.

"Me neither. Weird that Tripper didn't charge them."

"Maybe he's got a soft spot for little kids," Tripper said.

"Come on, boy," Wendy said. "Let's go home."

They did, but at the spot where the mama coyote had vanished into the underbrush, he circled, sniffing the ground, and then he took a couple of tentative steps toward the woods. He paused, marked a tree—it was the canine equivalent of a text message or maybe a p-mail saying "Honey, we need to talk"—and then ran across the bridge and caught up with Wendy and Dipper. One thing about dogs, emotional entanglements don't make them worry for long.

* * *

As soon as they returned home from their appointments and had a light lunch, they sat at the dining-room table and dutifully put in some study time—it was a study day, after all—and Dipper used their touch-telepathy to send Wendy the information he'd picked up from the ebook. "I'm still not clear on deconstruction analysis."

"It's a toughie," Dipper said. "OK, the term is from the work of Jacques Derrida, a philosopher. Paul de Man said that literary deconstruction analysis—I can remember this—provides a way 'in which the accidental features of a text can be seen as betraying or subverting its purportedly essential message.'"

"Yeah, that clarifies it," Wendy said.

"OK, Derrida basically defined things by saying what they're not. Deconstruction isn't a method or a technique or—it's sort of like the meaning of a work is beyond analysis, broader than any one interpretation could possibly be. By looking closely at how things are written, it's possible to say a work means the opposite of what the writer intended."

"Think that will be on the exam?"

"I hope not. Because all I can do is parrot back what I read. Tell you what, if you can remember verbatim quotes, you use those, and I'll paraphrase."

"Hey, if we sit across the room from each other, the prof will know we're not cheating."

"Yeah, but why tempt the fates, you know?"

They went over structuralism, New Criticism, Freudian criticism, Marxist criticism, reader-response, post-structuralism, the dreaded deconstructionism, feminist criticism, LGBQT criticism, new historicism, and postcolonial criticism. Then they strategized. "OK, we know from the mid-term that we'll probably get a list of four types of critical theory and will have two hours to write an essay in which we compare and contrast two of them. I'd bet we'll get some that will be easy to find common points—like new historicism and post-colonialism, or New Criticism and new historicism."

"Or feminist theory and postcolonial," Wendy said. "They're about analyzing assumptions and about how groups have been disadvantaged by traditional literature."

So they ran some possible scenarios, listing examples they could use. After that, they turned to their poly sci course, Government Systems, and quizzed each other. By four in the afternoon, Wendy said, "I think my brain is full. We're OK for tomorrow. Then the next day I got biology and you have physics, but I'm fine with bio. Got a hundred average in the classroom, ninety-five in the lab. How are you in physics?"

"Not quite as good as you in biology, but I'm not worried. Then we have research techniques together, but—"

"We don't even have to study," Wendy finished for him. Neither of them really liked that course—they both knew almost everything it taught already, and the exams were all simple rote memory, mostly multiple-choice, a few short-answer definitions. They were acing it without really studying, beyond reading the textbook, and the teacher, alas, a rather dull grad student, took his lectures straight from the text.

Long story short, they knocked off at four, then Dipper asked, "Want your present from me right now or wait until dinner?"

"Let's wait," Wendy said. "Mabes has put in a lot of effort in planning this. We've never eaten at Serafina's. I hope the food's worth what it's gonna cost."

"Me, too," Dipper said. "Can't wait to see you all dressed up!"

"If you like it, I'm glad to do it," she said. "Me, I'll probably be eager to get back home after dinner and get out of that dress."

"Keep the fishnets on, though," Dipper said with a grin.

"For you, maybe I will. Shoot, I know what I want for my birthday—but I forgot to see if I could find you a lamb costume."

Dipper face-planted on the table.

* * *

Mabel shooed Dipper out of the bedroom until she helped Wendy get all ready for the dinner date. Mabel was already wearing her outfit—an off-the-shoulder red top, a black silk skirt with a floral print in an arc above her left thigh, sheer black stockings, and mid-heel black shoes. She'd put her hair up and looked sophisticated and confident. "First," Mabel sad as she came out of their bedroom and struck a pose, "How do I look?"

"Great," Dipper said. "Like Audrey Hepburn in _Breakfast at Tiffany's._ "

"Aw, I was going for _My Fair Lady."_

"Seriously, Sis, very, very nice."

"Take a picture so I can send it to Teek?"

"Of course!" Dipper snapped about six of them and told her to take her pick.

"I'll decide that on the drive in," she said. "Now, allow me to present to you the graceful, charming, and oh so beautiful Lady Wendy Corduroy-Pines, the queen of the smart set!"

Wendy, rolling her eyes, emerged. Mabel had helped her put her hair up—no small task—and had done her eyebrows and lipstick (a subdued pink).

"Wow," Dipper said. "Now I'm embarrassed to be seen with you—because everybody will think 'He's not worthy!'"

"I'll decide that," she said.

They started to kiss, but Mabel yelped, "Easy, don't smear!"

"I can taste your lipstick," Dipper said.

"I'd rather have peppermint flavor."

"One last thing." Dipper went to the fridge and took out a square white box. "I hope you like this."

"Oh, man!" Wendy said when he took out the corsage—a beautiful white orchid with a spray of green.

"This time," he told her, "it doesn't go on your wrist." He pinned it on. "Hang on, Sis, and I'll help with yours," he said.

Mabel's was a demure cluster of three small roses, matching the print on her skirt. When Wendy had pinned it on—Mabel was a little shy of having her Brobro work with that low-cut off-the-shoulder top—she said, "Final touch, and then we can go." She brought Dipper's boutonniere, a white carnation, from the fridge, and Wendy pinned it on.

"Picture time!" Mabel said. "You guys look like you love each other, OK?"

"We'll try," Dipper said.

She snapped a few photos and then asked Dipper, "Did you feed the dog?"

"Of course, and don't believe him if he says otherwise."

They took Dipper's car—though Mabel complained, "You should have had it washed and waxed."

That was the first time that Dipper had ever paid for valet parking, but Mabel had briefed him, and he gave the guy a five-dollar tip along with his keys. Another five later at the end of the evening, when they delivered the car, he kept reminding himself.

Serafina's looked as if it had come out of a movie set during the 1890s—subdued lighting from ornate chandeliers, red velvet wallpaper, discreet framed silhouettes on the walls, tables and chairs in Empire-style mahogany, a pianist on a round dais playing softly. Dipper told the hostess they had reservations, she called a waitress, and the waitress led them into a side room, where they found a—

"Surprise!"

Wendy gasped.

Everyone was there—Manly Dan, her brothers, Junior and his long-term fiancée, Dipper's mom and dad, Aunt Sallie! She wasn't exactly semi-formal, but she looked church-dressy. And Soos and Melody, Candy Chiu, Tambry and Robbie!

Wendy teared up, but she looked happy. "Oh, you guys!"

"It's a special day," Manly Dan said. He wore a tuxedo—over-dressed, but he was hard to fit, and probably that was the only thing they could come up with to get on his huge frame. But even though technically he was fancier than his daughter, he started to bawl, as he always did, when he saw his girl in a dress. "Just like your mama," he managed.

Dipper escorted the guest of honor to the head table, which bore a cake—frosted in forest green. Elegant letters read Happy 21st Wendy, and, yes, twenty-one candles circled the edge.

Wendy said, "Oh, my—goodness! Thank you!"

"I baked it from scratch," Mabel said. "Obviously, this one isn't gonna go all around, but the restaurant has more, enough for everybody. Dip, you help me light 'em up. This one's yours and I'll use mine." She handed him one of those propane grill lighters. Mabel did ten, he did ten, and then Mabel said, "And you get number twenty-one, Dip!"

Her face pink but glowing with joy in the candlelight, Wendy gazed at her first birthday cake ever with shimmering eyes.

Mabel said, "Think up a wish! Now everybody—sing!"

After the obligatory off-key "Happy birthday to you" singalong, Wendy blew out the candles with one long whoosh. "Don't tell your wish!" Mabel warned. "'Cause you want it to come true."

Wendy softly looked around the room. Everyone stood round the table, smiling at her, and in their eyes she saw friendship and love. She squeezed her husband's hand and sent Dipper a private thought:

_It's already come true._

* * *

_The End_


End file.
